Five Secrets to Growing Talent

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Five Secrets to Growing Talent

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

1. Do it for them, then explain.

When the work is new for them, they don’t know how to do it. You’ve got to show them how to do it and explain everything. Tell them about your top-level approach; tell them why you focus on the new elements; show them how to make the chart that demonstrates the new one is better than the old one. Let them ask questions at every step. And tell them their questions are good ones. Praise them for their curiosity. And tell them the answers to the questions they should have asked you. And tell them they’re ready for the next level.

2. Do it with them, and let them hose it up.

Let them do the work they know how to do, you do all the new work except for one new element, and let them do that one bit of new work. They won’t know how to do it, and they’ll get it wrong. And you’ve got to let them. Pretend you’re not paying attention so they think they’re doing it on their own, but pay deep attention. Know what they’re going to do before they do it, and protect them from catastrophic failure. Let them fail safely. And when then hose it up, explain how you’d do it differently and why you’d do it that way. Then, let them do it with your help. Praise them for taking on the new work. Praise them for trying. And tell them they’re ready for the next level.

3. Let them do it, and help them when they need it.

Let them lead the project, but stay close to the work. Pretend to be busy doing another project, but stay one step ahead of them. Know what they plan to do before they do it. If they’re on the right track, leave them alone. If they’re going to make a small mistake, let them. And be there to pick up the pieces. If they’re going to make a big mistake, casually check in with them and ask about the project. And, with a light touch, explain why this situation is different than it seems. Help them take a different approach and avoid the big mistake. Praise them for their good work. Praise them for their professionalism. And tell them they’re ready for the next level.

4. Let them do it, and help only when they ask.

Take off the training wheels and let them run the project on their own. Work on something else, and don’t keep track of their work. And when they ask for help, drop what you are doing and run to help them. Don’t walk. Run. Help them like they’re your family. Praise them for doing the work on their own. Praise them for asking for help. And tell them they’re ready for the next level.

5. Do the new work for them, then repeat.

Repeat the whole recipe for the next level of new work you’ll help them master.

Image credit: misterinnovation.com

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The Cost of Surprising Customers

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The Cost of Surprising Customers

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Surprising customers with something they weren’t expecting doesn’t have to be expensive. In many cases, it can be very inexpensive or even free.

For example, surprising a couple with a cake and candle when they are celebrating at a restaurant costs a tiny fraction of the meal but greatly impacts the evening.

For years, I’ve shared the story of a cab driver who surprised his customers with a newspaper, a bottle of water and a side trip to see a famous local landmark. That side trip cost the driver nothing but a few minutes of time. And the newspaper and water cost him far less than the extra tip he received for adding these surprises to the experience.

Even though I have covered this concept before, it’s worth resurrecting. What inspired me to do so was an article by Chip Bell, my friend and fellow customer service expert, who recently wrote a Forbes article titled The Magic of Serving with Radical Generosity. His main example of this happened at the Marriott Long Wharf Hotel in Boston. He checked in late for a one-night stay. The front desk clerk upgraded him to one of the grandest rooms in the hotel.

The front desk clerk recognized Chip as a loyal Marriott Bonvoy member and knew the surprise of upgrading him to the nicer room wouldn’t cost the hotel any more than the regular room he was booked in. The result was a deepened sense of loyalty and sharing the story with others—in this case, thousands of readers of Chip’s Forbes article. The goodwill and word-of-mouth marketing the hotel received was far more than the upgrade cost, which was virtually nothing.

Surprising Customers Cartoon by Shep Hyken

But the surprise is nothing if there isn’t a supporting cast, as in the employees who make what Chip calls Radical Generosity come to life. The cast member’s role is to do more than just surprise the customer—it is to create a positive experience that transcends the surprise.

In my restaurant example, if all the server did was set a slice of cake in front of the guests and begrudgingly say, “Happy anniversary,” the experience would be tainted by the lack of enthusiasm for the moment. The guest might say, “That was nice, but …” It takes more than one positive moment to make the experience.

If you like the idea of surprising a customer, share these examples at your next team meeting. Then, kick off a discussion that starts with this question: What’s our version of a hotel’s room upgrade or a surprise slice of cake?

Image Credits: Pexels

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Is Your Organization Digital Transformation Ready?

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Is Your Organization Digital Transformation Ready?

GUEST POST from Howard Tiersky

Our team at FROM has worked with dozens of global brands helping advise their leaders about digital transformation. Across all that experience we’ve seen the things that cause companies to struggle to achieve successful transformation and those who set themselves up for success.

We recently assembled our most experienced consultants to distill down the ten key factors that influence a company’s achievement at driving successful digital transformation. You don’t necessarily have to be a perfect 10 in every one of these to be successful, but the more of them you score highly on, the greater your odds. The fewer, the greater the risk.

As we are wrapping up 2024, we are considering where each of our clients score in these areas and what steps we can help them take to move towards optimizing them further.

So, drum roll please; these are the ten factors that are indicators of likely success at digital transformation:

1. Leadership Prioritization: If an organization does not feel that its leader is truly behind digital transformation, getting teams aligned will be a challenge. Transformation often requires risk, and the organization needs to know that its leaders support exploring game-changing ideas.

2. Digital Vision: Success does not happen by accident. Although a vision can evolve over time, companies that succeed in major transformations always start with a clear picture of where they want to go.

3. Iterative Development Process: Many studies have shown that iterative development processes based on Agile frameworks are the methodology used by almost every single successful digital enterprise. Agile approaches get short-term releases into production so that teams can learn from customer feedback and real-world usage and then iterate the product vision based on those learnings.

This process of rapid iteration between design/development and customer usage is the cornerstone of all successful digital products.

4. Flexible Platforms: You can have the best vision and business model, but if you can’t build solutions rapidly and bring them to market, you cannot compete in a fast-changing world. Companies who are trying to innovate and be “digital” but who’s transactional and delivery/service capabilities are tied to inflexible legacy systems are innovating with a 300-pound anchor around their neck.

5. APIs and Ecosystem: Crowdsourcing, open innovation, and extended partner ecosystems are the foundation of most digital business models. Digital businesses that allow others to build on top of their platforms grow much faster than those that don’t. Salesforce, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Major League Baseball all expose massive amounts of data and functionality through publicly available APIs and have large numbers of companies and individual entrepreneurs extending and adding additional value to their offerings.

6. Customer Insight & Metrics: Success comes from driving desired customer behaviors – sales, loyalty, self-service, referrals, etc. Teams that are successful at conceiving products or marketing programs that drive desired behaviors do so because they have insight into their customers: their desires, their fears, and their unmet needs.

7. Culture of Innovation: The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. Companies with a consistent track record of innovation don’t do it by having a few geniuses who have all the ideas. Everyone in your organization has a different perspective on the customer, your supply chain and your business process and everyone has different life experiences that may serve as points of inspiration for the next big idea. Companies that succeed at digital transformation engage the entire enterprise to generate and evaluate ideas, resulting in higher quality ideas as well as increased ownership across the organization.

8. Experimentation: The world is changing fast. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. Companies that are successful don’t get there by always being right; they do it by trying a lot of things, measuring results and seeing what works. Ideas more often fail than succeed, but that’s fine as long as you have a process for identifying the winners. By contrast, many companies that struggle with innovation and transformation reward success and punish failure. Teams who are driven to avoid failure are by definition is driven to avoid experimentation. No experimentation, no success.

9. Customer Data and Personalization: We live in the age of “big data.” Many of the best opportunities in the digital space come as a result of gathering detailed data about each customer and personalizing their experience based on that data. Customers who do this have decreased cost of sales and increased loyalty.

10. Readiness to Invent New Business Models around Digital: Digital isn’t just about new ways of doing things, in most cases, it up-ends existing business models and cost structures. Netflix delivers unlimited videos for $20 a month. Skype lets you talk to anyone in the world for one cent per minute or less. Companies who are overly concerned about sticking to their existing business model tend to miss the biggest opportunities they have to serve their customers in ways that compete in the digital world.

How did you score? We’d love to know and let us know if we can be of help in your efforts at successful digital transformation.

This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog

Image Credits: Unsplash

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of September 2024

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of September 2024Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are September’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Three Reasons Nobody Cares About Your Ideas — by Greg Satell
  2. Six Key Habits of Great Leaders — by David Burkus
  3. Are You Leading in the Wrong Zone? — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  4. Projects Don’t Go All Right or All Wrong — by Howard Tiersky
  5. How to Cultivate Respect as a Leader — by David Burkus
  6. What is Your Mindset? Fixed, Growth or Hybrid? — by Stefan Lindegaard
  7. Embracing Failure is a Catalyst for Learning and Innovation — by Stefan Lindegaard
  8. ISO Innovation Standards — by Robyn Bolton
  9. The Hidden Cost of Waiting — by Mike Shipulski
  10. AI Requires Conversational Intelligence — by Greg Satell

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in August that continue to resonate with people:

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

SPECIAL BONUS – THREE DAYS ONLY: From now until 11:59PM ET you can get either the eBook or the hardcover version of the SECOND EDITION of my latest bestselling book Charting Change for 50% OFF using code FLSH50. This deal won’t last long, so grab your copy while supplies last!

Accelerate your change and transformation success

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:

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Who is More Creative – Women or Men?

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753 Studies Have the Answer

Who is More Creative – Women or Men?

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You were born creative. As an infant, you had to figure many things out—how to get fed or changed, get help or attention, and make a onesie covered in spit-up still look adorable.  As you grew older, your creativity grew, too.  You drew pictures, wrote stories, played dress-up, and acted out imaginary stories.

Then you went to school, and it was time to be serious.  Suddenly, creativity had a time and place.  It became an elective or a hobby.  Something you did just enough of to be “well-rounded” but not so much that you would be judged irresponsible or impractical.

When you entered the “real world,” your job determined whether you were creative.  Advertising, design, marketing, innovation?  Creative.  Business, medicine, law, engineering?  Not creative.

As if Job-title-a-determinant-of-creativity wasn’t silly enough, in 2022, a paper was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology that declared that, based on a meta-analysis of 259 studies (n=79,915), there is a “male advantage in creative performance.”

Somewhere, Don Draper, Pablo Picasso, and Norman Mailer high-fived.

But, as every good researcher (and innovator) knows, the headline is rarely the truth.  The truth is that it’s contextual and complicated, and everything from how the original studies collected data to how “creativity” was defined matters.

But that’s not what got reported.  It’s also not what people remember when they reference this study (and I have heard more than a few people invoke these findings in the three years since publication).

That is why I was happy to see Fortune report on a new study just published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. The study cites findings from a meta-analysis of 753 studies (n=265,762 individuals) that show men and women are equally creative. When “usefulness (of an idea) is explicitly incorporated in creativity assessment,” women’s creativity is “stronger.”

Somewhere, Mary Wells Lawrence, Frida Kahlo, and Virginia Woolf high-fived.

Of course, this finding is also contextual.

What makes someone “creative?”

Both studies defined creativity as “the generation of novel and useful ideas.”

However, while the first study focused on how context drives creativity, the second study looked deeper, focusing on two essential elements of creativity: risk-taking and empathy. The authors argued that risk-taking is critical to generating novel ideas, while empathy is essential to developing useful ideas.

Does gender influence creativity?

It can.  But even when it does, it doesn’t make one gender more or less creative than the other.

Given “contextual moderators” like country-level culture, industry gender composition, and role status, men tend to follow an “agentic pathway” (creativity via risk-taking), so they are more likely to generate novel ideas.

However, given the same contextual moderators, women follow a “communal pathway” (creativity via empathy), so they are more likely to generate useful ideas.

How you can use this to maximize creativity

Innovation and creativity go hand in hand. Both focus on creating something new (novel) and valuable (useful).  So, to maximize innovation within your team or organization, maximize creativity by:

  • Explicitly incorporate novelty and usefulness in assessment criteria.  If you focus only on usefulness, you’ll end up with extremely safe and incremental improvements.  If you focus only on novelty, you’ll end up with impractical and useless ideas.
  • Recruit for risk-taking and empathy.  While the manifestation of these two skills tends to fall along gender lines, don’t be sexist and assume that’s always the case.  When seeking people to join your team or your brainstorming session, find people who have demonstrated strong risk-taking or empathy-focused behaviors and invite them in.
  • Always consider the context.  Just as “contextual moderators” impact people’s creative pathways, so too does the environment you create.  If you want people to take risks, be vulnerable, and exhibit empathy, you must establish a psychologically safe environment first.  And that starts with making sure there aren’t any “tokens” (one of a “type”) in the group.

Which brings us back to the beginning.

You ARE creative.

How will you be creative today?

Image credit: Unsplash

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We Need to Solve the Productivity Crisis

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We Need to Solve the Productivity Crisis

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

When politicians and pundits talk about the economy, they usually do so in terms of numbers. Unemployment is too high or GDP is too low. Inflation should be at this level or at that. You get the feeling that somebody somewhere is turning knobs and flicking levers in order to get the machine humming at just the right speed.

Yet the economy is really about our well being. It is, at its core, our capacity to produce goods and services that we want and need, such as the food that sustains us, the homes that shelter us and the medicines that cure us, not to mention all of the little niceties and guilty pleasures that we love to enjoy.

Our capacity to generate these things is determined by our productive capacity. Despite all the hype about digital technology creating a “new economy,” productivity growth for the past 50 years has been tremendously sluggish. If we are going to revive it and improve our lives we need to renew our commitment to scientific capital, human capital and free markets.

Restoring Scientific Capital

In 1945, Vannevar Bush, delivered a report, Science, The Endless Frontier, that argued that the US government needed to invest in “scientific capital” and through basic research and scientific education. It would set in motion a number of programs that would set the stage for America’s technological dominance during the second half of the century.

Bush’s report led to the development of America’s scientific infrastructure, including agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and DARPA. Others, such as the National Labs and science programs at the Department of Agriculture, also contribute significantly to our scientific capital.

The results speak for themselves and returns on public research investment have been shown to surpass those in private industry. To take just one example, it has been estimated that the $3.8 billion invested in the Human Genome Project resulted in nearly $800 billion in economic impact and created over 300,000 jobs in just the first decade.

Unfortunately, we forgot those lessons. Government investment in research as a percentage of GDP has been declining for decades, limiting our ability to produce the kinds of breakthrough discoveries that lead to exciting new industries. What passes for innovation these days displaces workers, but does not lead to significant productivity gains.

So the first step to solving the productivity puzzle would be to renew our commitment to investing in the type of scientific knowledge that, as Bush put it, can “turn the wheels of private and public enterprise.” There was a bill before congress to do exactly that, but unfortunately it got bogged down in the Senate due to infighting.

Investing In Human Capital

Innovation, at its core, is something that people do, which is why education was every bit as important to Bush’s vision as investment was. “If ability, and not the circumstance of family fortune, is made to determine who shall receive higher education in science, then we shall be assured of constantly improving quality at every level of scientific activity,” he wrote.

Programs like the GI Bill delivered on that promise. We made what is perhaps the biggest investment ever in human capital, sending millions to college and creating a new middle class. American universities, considered far behind their European counterparts earlier in the century, especially in the sciences, came to be seen as the best in the world by far.

Today, however, things have gone horribly wrong. A recent study found that about half of all college students struggle with food insecurity, which is probably why only 60% of students at 4-year institutions and even less at community colleges ever earn a degree. The ones that do graduate are saddled with decades of debt

So the bright young people who we don’t starve we are condemning to decades of what is essentially indentured servitude. That’s no way to run an entrepreneurial economy. In fact, a study done by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that student debt has a measurable negative impact on new business creation.

Recommitting Ourselves To Free and Competitive Markets

There is no principle more basic to capitalism than that of free markets, which provide the “invisible hand” to efficiently allocate resources. When market signals get corrupted, we get less of what we need and more of what we don’t. Without vigorous competition, firms feel less of a need to invest and innovate, and become less productive.

There is abundant evidence that is exactly what has happened. Since the late 1970s antitrust enforcement has become lax, ushering in a new gilded age. While digital technology was hyped as a democratizing force, over 75% of industries have seen a rise in concentration levels since the late 1990s, which has led to a decline in business dynamism.

The problem isn’t just monopoly power dominating consumers, either, but also monopsony, or domination of suppliers by buyers, especially in labor markets. There is increasing evidence of collusion among employers designed to keep wages low, while an astonishing abuse of non-compete agreements that have affected more than a third of the workforce.

In a sense, this is nothing new. Adam Smith himself observed in The Wealth of Nations that “Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”

Getting Back On Track

In the final analysis, solving the productivity puzzle shouldn’t be that complicated. It seems that everything we need to do we’ve done before. We built a scientific architecture that remains unparalleled even today. We led the world in educating our people. American markets were the most competitive on the planet.

Yet somewhere we lost our way. Beginning in the early 1970s, we started reducing our investment in scientific research and public education. In the early 1980s, the Chicago school of competition law started to gain traction and antitrust enforcement began to wane. Since 2000, competitive markets in the United States have been in serious decline.

None of this was inevitable. We made choices and those choices had consequences. We can make other ones. We can choose to invest in discovering new knowledge, educate our children without impoverishing them, to demand our industries compete and hold our institutions to account. We’ve done these things before and can do so again.

All that’s left is the will and the understanding that the economy doesn’t exist in the financial press, on the floor of the stock markets or in the boardrooms of large corporations, but in our own welfare as well as in our ability to actualize our potential and realize our dreams. Our economy should be there to serve our needs, not the other way around.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Unsplash

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Four Keys to Mastering Active Listening

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Four Keys to Mastering Active Listening

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Are you a good listener?

You may think you’re a good listener—maybe someone even told you were a good listener. Or maybe not. As a leader, this is a very important question. So much of your ability to solve the problems your team is bringing to you depends upon your ability to understand them. And in order to help your team feel heard and listened to when their pitching possible solutions depends on being a good listener.

No matter what you answered to the opening question, there’s good news for all. Listening well is a skill—the skill of active listening. And while that skill is crucial for communication, collaboration, and problem-solving, it’s also learnable.

In this article, we will explore the skill of active listening and how it can benefit both leaders and their teams. To do that, we will delve into the four specific skills involved in active listening using an acronym first developed by communication expert Julian Treasure: RASA—Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, and Ask.

1. Receive

The first skill of active listening is to receive. Truly paying attention and receiving the information being shared is the first step in active listening. It involves listening without interrupting or formulating a response, making eye contact, and paying attention to non-verbal cues. By actively receiving information, leaders demonstrate their commitment to understanding and valuing the speaker’s perspective.

When leaders listen without interrupting, they create a safe space for open communication and encourage the speaker to express themselves fully. Making eye contact and paying attention to non-verbal cues, such as body language and facial expressions, helps leaders gain a deeper understanding of the speaker’s emotions and intentions. Taking notes, if necessary, ensures accurate reception of information and allows leaders to refer back to important points during discussions or when making decisions.

2. Appreciate

The second skill of active listening is to appreciate. Appreciation involves showing non-verbal signs of appreciation, such as nodding or making eye contact, to let the speaker know that their words are being heard and valued. By expressing appreciation through gestures, nods, and verbal cues, leaders create a positive and supportive environment that encourages open communication.

When leaders make the speaker feel valued and heard, it fosters trust and respect within the team. Genuine interest and active engagement in the conversation encourage the speaker to share more, leading to a deeper understanding of their thoughts and feelings. By appreciating the speaker’s perspective, leaders create a space where diverse ideas and opinions are welcomed and respected.

3. Summarize

The third skill of active listening is to summarize. Summarizing what the other person has said demonstrates understanding and allows leaders to check for accuracy. By reiterating the main points of what the speaker has shared, leaders show that they have been actively listening and processing the information.

Confirming understanding and giving the speaker an opportunity to clarify or correct any misunderstandings is crucial in effective communication. Leaders can use phrases like “What I heard you say is…” or “It sounds like you’re saying…” to summarize the speaker’s points and seek confirmation. This not only ensures that leaders have accurately understood the message but also makes the speaker feel heard and respected.

4. Ask

The final skill of active listening is to ask. Asking questions after a teammate has finished sharing allows leaders to delve deeper into the speaker’s thoughts and feelings, encouraging further discussion and exploration. By asking open-ended questions, leaders prompt the speaker to provide more details or insights, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of the topic at hand.

It is important for leaders to avoid jumping to advice-giving and instead focus on understanding the speaker’s perspective. By asking thoughtful questions, leaders show genuine interest and create an environment where individuals feel comfortable sharing their ideas and concerns. This fosters better collaboration and problem-solving within teams.

Practicing and improving these four skills will improve your active listening. But more importantly, it will improve listening and communication on the whole team. Leaders set the example for their team members to follow. And as team members emulate the example and improve their own skills, that fosters an environment of trust and respect during discussions. And a team demonstrating trust and respect is a team that helps everyone do their best work ever.

Image credit: Pixabay

Originally published on DavidBurkus.com on September 4, 2023

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Are You Continuing to Stop and Start the Hard Way?

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Are You Continuing to Stop and Start the Hard Way?

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

The stop, start, continue method (SSC) is a simple, yet powerful, way to plan your day, week and year. And though it’s simple, it’s not simplistic. And though it looks straightforward, it’s onion-like in its layers.

Stop, start, continue (SSC) is interesting in that it’s forward-looking, present-looking, and rearward-looking at the same time. And its power comes from the requirement that the three time perspectives must be reconciled with each other. Stopping is easy, but what will start? Starting is easy, unless nothing is stopped. Continuing is easy, but it’s not the right thing if the rules have changed. And starting can’t start if everything continues.

Stop. With SSC, stopping is the most important part. That’s why it’s first in the sequence. When everyone’s plates are full and every meeting is an all-you-can-eat buffet, without stopping, all the new action items slathered on top simply slip off the plate and fall to the floor. And this is double trouble because while it’s clear new action items are assigned, there’s no admission that the carpet is soiled with all those recently added action items.

Here’s a rule: If you don’t stop, you can’t start.
And here’s another: Pros stop, and rookies start.

With continuous improvement, you should stop what didn’t work. But with innovation, you should stop what was successful. Let others fan the flames of success while you invent the new thing that will start a bigger blaze.

Start. With SSC, starting is the easy part, but it shouldn’t be. Resources are finite, but we conveniently ignore this reality so we can start starting. The trouble with starting is that no one wants to let go of continuing. Do everything you did last year and start three new initiatives. Continue with your current role, but start doing the new job so you can get the promotion in three years.

Here’s a rule: Starting must come at the expense of continuing.
And here’s another: Pros do stop, start, continue, and rookies do start, start, start.

Continue. With SSC, continue is underrated. If you’re always starting, it’s because you have nothing good to continue. And if you’ve got a lot of continuing to do, it’s because you’ve got a lot of good things going on. And continuing is efficient because you’re not doing something for the first time. And everyone knows how to do the work and it goes smoothly.

But there’s a dark side to continue – it’s called the status quo. The status quo is a powerful, one-trick pony that only knows how to continue. It hates stopping and blocks all starting. Continuing is the mortal enemy of innovation.

Here’s a rule: Continuing must stop, or starting can’t start.
And here’s another: Pros continue and stop before they start, and rookies start.

SSC is like juggling three balls at once. Just as it’s not juggling unless it’s three balls at the same time, it’s not SSC unless it’s stop, start, continue all done at the same time. And just as juggling two balls at once isn’t juggling, it’s not SSC if it’s just two out of the three. And just as dropping two of the three balls on the floor isn’t juggling, it’s not SSC if it’s starting, starting, starting.

Image credit: Pexels

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Don’t Bring a Can of Gasoline to a Fire

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Crisis Management

Don’t Bring A Can Of Gasoline To A Fire

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

This is a departure from my usual customer service and customer experience (CX) articles. While it does tie in to service and CX, it is really about leadership. In customer service and CX, resolving a complaint or crisis means resolving the issue to the customer’s satisfaction, ideally in a way that makes the customer say, “I’ll be back.” Sometimes, customers’ requests and expectations can cause frustration, but let’s put it into perspective.

Let’s say that your customer isn’t an individual or a company that calls you with a request, question or problem. Instead, that customer is a branch of the military, such as the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines or Coast Guard. Or perhaps, that customer is an entire country.

I recently had the privilege of visiting Scott Air Force Base and attending a lecture by Chief Master Sergeant Brian P. Kruzelnick, the command senior leader for the U.S. Transportation Command and principal advisor to the combatant commander and senior staff on matters concerning joint force integration, readiness, growth and utilization of the military workforce.

Chief Kruzelnick, or BK as he likes to be called, shared leadership lessons with an audience of 20 successful business owners. At the beginning of his presentation, he referred to all the people he served as customers. That caught my attention. In a way, the military is like a monopoly. If you want to “call in the troops,” you don’t shop around to determine which “brand” you want to work with, and you don’t get competitive pricing. You just get what you get.

But BK and his team take incredible pride in the work they do. They function like a group of senior leaders at a large, successful company. So, I asked, “BK, can I interview you for Amazing Business Radio and a Forbes article?” Fortunately for us all, he said, “Yes,” and the result is a number of lessons that all leaders can adopt for customer service, especially when it comes to crisis management.

BK started as if he were narrating a story: “It was 17 days in August. …” He was referring to the evacuation in Afghanistan in 2021. “We evacuated 123,334 men, women and children using 800 military aircraft. They went across nine countries and eight time zones. Unfortunately, 13 lives were lost, each one an American hero. We also had 20 babies born on those aircraft as we were evacuating them out.”

Consider the math. How many people could each plane transport? The larger C-17 planes are mainly used for cargo. They have the ability to move people, and with seats installed, usually about 120 passengers. But at one point, they put 823 people on a single aircraft. The engineers and experts knew they could do it. They actually had the passengers sat in the cargo hold and had a strap across their lap for safety. In a time of crisis, they successfully executed the largest evacuation the U.S. ever attempted.

But there was more. At the same time, there was a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Haiti. There were wildfires in California that burned 1 million acres. A Category 4 hurricane blew through Louisiana. And if that wasn’t enough, there were safety inspections of the military’s larger aircraft that had to be completed across the entire fleet for a possible safety issue. BK proudly said, “And we got it all accomplished in 17 days in August. Wow!”

I joked about how many flight attendants it takes for 823 passengers. BK replied, “We don’t have flight attendants on C-17’s, but we have military personnel who are there to take care of business.” He shared a story about a young boy who was in the cargo hold and was laying on the floor next to his mother. He was cold and scared. One of the crew members took off his military jacket and wrapped it around the young boy, and then walked away to continue his job. Another crew member saw this and caught the moment with a photo.

BK said, “I think that defined the whole movement of what we did. Aside from everything else you hear about, that thing boiled down to humanity. Our ability to care for someone who needed to be cared for. That one picture epitomized that 17-day operation.”

In this incredible military operation, boundaries were pushed. Protocols were modified to suit the situation. The question was, how do you push or break a system that has never been stretched so far, and possibly change precedents for the future?

There is much to learn about managing a crisis from this incredible story. Let’s wrap up with BK’s six crisis management and leadership lessons:

1. Clarity in Times of Crisis: In times of crisis, there must be a clear objective that people can rally around. The goal is clarity. Everyone must understand what the commanding officer—or in the world of businesses, a leader or manager—wants and expects.

2. Extensive Training: People have to be trained to a level that makes them successful. On-the-job training is not possible in crisis situations. BK refers to this as Adventure Training. Nobody should be put into a position of questioning if something is going to work. On the contrary, there must be a level of comfort when you’re feeling the pressure of a crisis, and that comes from a foundation of strong training.

3. Prepare for the Worst: BK says, “I don’t think big companies think about their worst day. Most are building themselves to be at the best, optimal, all the time. But how many times do we think about our worst moments and how we can act and react to ensure we can still execute, perform and succeed? In the military, we run exercises all the time to make sure we can respond regardless of the situation. … There’s enough foundational training that we can operate and execute when called upon.”

4. Empowerment on Steroids: You must feel trusted enough to make decisions without fear of repercussions. BK said, “People must have the faith and trust of the organization resting on their shoulders that if they pushed the limits, which they knew they could do and still be safe, that no one would come down and try to hammer them negatively for what they did because there was trust in their expertise.”

5. Faith, Hope and Love: Let’s break these down one at a time:

  • Faith — As a leader, you must have faith in your organization, the processes, the people executing and yourself.
  • Hope — You must have hope. BK says, “Hope is critically important, because if you have hope, everybody that follows you will have hope because they’re looking to you as the leader.” I challenged that with the old saying, “Hope is not a strategy.” His quick response was, “Hopelessness is not a strategy either, so I would take hope.”
  • Love — Have passion for what you do and compassion for the people you do it with.

6. Bring Harmony to Chaos: As we came to the end of the interview, I asked for one final piece of crisis leadership advice. BK quickly responded, “Bring harmony to chaos. Don’t bring a can of gasoline to the fire!”

Image Credits: Pixabay

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

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Igniting Innovation with Deep Dialogue

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Igniting Innovation with Deep Dialogue

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

I have just returned from a short sabbatical in Bali, Indonesia, a place of unparalleled beauty, lushness, and deep spirituality. Bali invites and fosters opportunities for retreat, reflection, and replenishment and is a vital space for restoration and renewal. As you may know, a sabbatical is an extended period away from work for study, travel, or personal growth. In my case, it was in response to an invitation to attend a deep dialogue session that included high-level leaders from many countries and sectors of society across the Asia Pacific region.  This entailed days spent in deep listening and inquiring processes involving quietening the mind, accessing the heart and respecting the body within a unique environment. It supported people through their change fatigue, unleashed their emotional energy, and sparked collective intelligence to emerge hopefulness, unity, faith, and possibility in the future of humanity.

It allowed people to emerge, diverge, and converge their positive and creative change choices to transform their worlds.

What is deep dialogue?

Dialogue can be defined as “a sustained collective inquiry into the processes, assumptions, and certainties that structure everyday experience”. The word “dialogue” originates from two Greek roots, ‘dia’ and ‘logos’ suggesting “meaning flowing through.”

It’s important to understand that dialogue is not the same as the often unproductive and mechanistic debates we are familiar with. Deep dialogue is a sustained collective inquiry that sparks collective intelligence through a facilitated process that delves into the values, needs, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, assumptions and certainties that shape our everyday experiences, feelings and thoughts about the future.

Deep dialogue is not just a creative conversation; it involves strategic, collective and insightful inquiry, detached observation, attention and intention, and multi-faceted listening processes.

It requires a willingness to suspend and let go of reactive and defensive exchanges and delve into their systemic causes. It helps to spark people’s collective intelligence to create moments of clarity in resolving complex and critical problems creatively and differently.

In contrast with more familiar modes of inquiry, deep dialogue involves an emergence process. It begins without an agenda and a ‘leader’ but with an accomplished facilitator and without a specific task or decision to make.

One key element in fostering productive dialogue is the role of the facilitator. The facilitator’s task is to co-create a collective holding space that encourages participants to disrupt and safely challenge their habitual thinking processes. This approach is based on the understanding that our problems cannot be solved using the same thinking that created them.

Knowing that we can’t keep on producing the results we want.

Deep dialogue evokes collective intelligence, opening new possibilities for shared thinking and fostering a sense of authenticity, unity and shared purpose in any endeavour.

What are the barriers that often hinder deep and meaningful dialogue?

The constant, relentless impact of accelerating change, disruption, and uncertainty, as well as the ongoing impact of our post-COVID isolation and people’s lack of belonging, never allows or permits us the key moments that enable us to engage in and reap the benefits that deep dialogue offers.

This lack of belonging and isolation are significant barriers to meaningful dialogue that evoke the positive changes we seek in our personal and professional lives.

As a seasoned corporate trainer, facilitator, coach, and consultant, I have observed that many people unconsciously still suffer from emotional overwhelm, causing them to lose their ‘spark’ or emotional energy. They also unconsciously suffer from cognitive overload, with little mental or thinking space to explore the impact of their thoughts and feelings on who they are, which diminishes any positivity, hope, and optimism for themselves, their teams, and organisations today and in the future.

Alternately, it is much easier and more comfortable for some people to be unconsciously reactive, defensive, and singularly focused, never developing their pause power.

By avoiding taking any personal responsibility or being accountable for interrupting their busyness and shifting their inner being, and developing the deliberate calm required to be, think, and act differently in the face of any instability, insecurity, sorrow, or unwellness, they may be experiencing in their hearts and minds.

Upon arrival, I discovered I was also unconsciously doing this despite my regular wellness routine and habits.

During the three-day process, I was encouraged to pay attention and notice how energetically, emotionally, and physically exhausted I felt and how my mind had been kidnapped and overloaded by my unconscious fears and anxiety over the state of the world.

Like many others, I had also unconsciously been wilfully pushing myself as a human doing rather than as a human being.   

This left no space or safe moments for sparking moments of clarity, never mind socialising or connecting with others to spark collective intelligence and consciously effect positive change.

Why is deep dialogue critical in today’s uncertain and disrupted world?

Fortunately, I was supported to enter and engage in deep dialogue, which allowed our group of global leaders to safely interrupt our ‘busyness’, stop, and emerge a range of vital and subtle moments.  

To cultivate and nurture our inner awareness by retreating and reflecting through mindfulness, contemplation, meditation, and silence.  

It awakened us to become conscious of the subtle world that connects our unique cognitive and emotional inner structures of thoughts and feelings to the outer world we mostly unconsciously created and experienced. 

It was a powerful, transformative experience for every one of us.

Because when we change, the world changes.

Choosing to cross the bridge consciously

We can engage in deep dialogue when we are empowered, enabled and equipped to stop, pause, retreat, and reflect.

By being curious, compassionate, and courageous in opening our hearts, minds, and will, we can spark regeneration, replenishment, and renewal of the range of options, choices, and intentions.

We can cross the bridge, individually and collectively, to re-create or co-create a compelling, sustainable, inclusive, and equitable future for everyone.

Anyone can be proactive and evoke creative sparks collectively and collaboratively to unleash our options, choices, and intentions by being in the present and bridging the past with a desirable future.

It is foundational to creating, inventing, and innovating our futures and reclaiming our inner dignity and power over our lives.

To spark our collective intelligence, all leaders must commit to consciously using this moment to create what is possible rather than reacting and passively accepting what might appear inevitable to some of us.

Please find out more about our work at ImagineNation™.

Please find out about our collective learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, it is a collaborative, intimate, and profoundly personalised innovation coaching and learning program supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, and can be customised as a bespoke corporate learning program.

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem focus, human-centric approach, and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation, and upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness, within your unique innovation context. Please find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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