bill mccreary image from nhl.com

some nights in hockey — especially if your team has a reputation — referees will blow the whistle a little more than usual. it just happens that other games are merely called tight with little room to interpret the rules. whatever the cause, you never want to have your players cutting ruts to the penalty box.

on the bench during those kinds of games, there’s a common saying that gets passed around among coaches and players: “don’t give them an excuse to put you in the box.” it’s a simple message. even if what would normally not be called an infraction earns you a 2 minute trip to the sin bin, as a player you have to be smarter than that and adapt. you can’t give the referees any excuse to call you for it. keep the sticks down, keep both hands on your stick, and watch the play along the boards.

business can be much the same with clients instead of referees. some might love everything you develop for them or the kinds of services you provide, but others may be insatiable still and find flaws with anything you bring to bear. if you know you’re dealing with the latter, follow the same simple rule: don’t give them an excuse.

don’t give your clients a reason to question the validity of your statements; be sure to practice each and every one of your presentations and always perform the proper amount of due diligence in defining answers to their questions.

don’t give your clients a reason to believe that your products are broken; test, retest, and test some more until you’re absolutely certain that your products or services are programmed properly, or mathematically sound, or have multiple research studies to support them.

don’t give your clients a reason to feel like they can go elsewhere and get the same service; go out of your way to prove your organization’s commitment to them by answering their phone calls promptly, replying to their emails the same day, and generally making them feel like you give a damn about them as customers.

if you’re dealing with a difficult client, don’t complain if they’re bitchy or a hard-ass or they’re calling bad penalties. just don’t give them an excuse to call one in the first place.

image by NHLFlyers, official twitter handle of the philadelphia flyers

when your favorite sports team finds issues to work on, they spend more time on it in practice.

powerplay numbers down? you can bet that your favorite hockey team is going to spend more time in the umbrella during practice.

not winning the battles along the boards? eat your wheaties and have yourself a powerbar before you hit the ice, because we’re doing nothing but 2-on-2′s for a solid 15 minutes down in the corners.

sloppy line changes in the second period? get ready to play a lot of dump and chase and listen for your line to be called.

i think we’ve got the individual training down pretty well in industry. we have one day training events to introduce people to new concepts. we have 2 and 3 day seminars to teach solid fundamentals of what makes a good consultant. we have week long “boot camps” for certification training and exams. but what about the rest of your team?

granted, there’s no way you can take an entire 30-40 person project team and send them all to the same PMP boot camp for an entire week. but why don’t we practice as a team on other things, like email communication? or developing presentations? or leading effective meetings? i think you’ll hear people expressing this need often enough (“hey guys, we really need to be doing a better job of sharing information.”), but we don’t ever seem to follow up on that? how come?

here are three things that should help you practice as a team:

1. set a benchmark and a goal.
   you need to know what your current ability level is first. it’s going to be hard to quantify certain things — like effective communication — but try as best as you can to keep from giving yourself an arbitrary ‘poor, average, good, awesome’ rating scale. once you know where you’re at, set a goal for where you want to be. “hey gang, our email strings are on average 6-8 messages long. let’s start using wikis and cut this number down to 3-4 messages by next month.”
2. focus on the bright spots.
   you can’t all be terrible at everything.. or maybe you are. either way, someone somewhere has to be doing things the right way, or at least closer to the way you’d like to be doing things. focus on what these people are doing and learn from them. “the client has always been impressed with julie’s presentations. let’s try to be more like julie.”
3. forgive, forgive, and then forgive again.
   people are going to make mistakes, but you should never hold this against them. how many times do you see a running back in football fumble only to have his head coach call a running play the very next series out on the field to build his confidence? forgive mistakes, use them as learning experiences, and then give that person another opportunity. “hey, trish, you were pretty shaky in speaking with the client today; you’re doing alright on your own, but you’re not there yet. we have another meeting coming up on tuesday, and i’m going to need you to be on your A-game. before the presentation, spend at least one more hour reviewing the materials and practicing than you did last time.”

use these three principles to shape your project team’s practice playbook. rather than individuals returning from training courses to a project team that isn’t fertile enough for their newly acquired abilities to incubate, you’ll see improvements across the board if your whole team focuses on that same thing. change always works best when done in groups.

it doesn’t make sense to practice your 5-on-4 powerplay one player at a time — so why do it with your project teams?

i wanted to do a quick and dirty case study on the “i want to go to the zoo with roy halladay” brand to see if we can figure out how all of this national exposure came to a simple bolg that someone created on blogger.com (it has since been moved to its own domain).

1. the bolg is really fun.
i think the first thing to look at is of course the fun factor.  things go viral on the internet for only a few reasons: (a) they’re absolutely hilarious, (b) they’re extremely inspirational, (c) it involves justin bieber.  the whole bolg is predicated on wanting to spend a day at the zoo with the phillies right-handed ace, roy halladay.  if that’s not funny enough, just read some of the bolg posts and tweets (especially drunk zwr tweets).  i’m not saying that it’s hilarious to everyone, but it’s comedy certainly has found a market — even bringing sam rosen and tim mccarver to laughter in the fox broadcast booth.  people love to share laughter, and it’s easy to share zoowithroy.

2. it’s over the top.
not only is it funny, but it’s over the top.  is zwr serious about going to the zoo with roy halladay?  yes he certainly is.  but he has taken something serious and made a farce out of it.  it’s not just ridiculous, it’s so ridiculous.  (it’s not just cuttered, it’s so cuttered.)  it’s not a woody allen brand of humor, it’s a will ferrell movie.  certainly woody allen has a lot of fans, but do you walk into a bar on a saturday night and hear people quoting small time crooks?  no.  you hear them quoting talladega nights and anchorman.

3. zwr lives his brand.  everyday.
this one is maybe the most important lesson that we can learn from zoowithroy.com.  its creator lives the brand he’s made.  he doesn’t have a name.  he doesn’t have a face.  he lives his brand — zwr — everyday.  when he tweets, when he writes his bolg posts, even when he’s on television.  it’s zwr 24/7.  everything you see and hear is consistent across every medium.

4. zwr has made his bolg a community.
there are a lot of key pieces to the zwr puzzle to be found in this arena.  everyone knows that a sense of community is really important for the success of a brand.  zwr builds a community around a central idea — going to the zoo with everyone’s favorite phillies pitcher — but he does so through the use of language and inside jokes.  terms like “donkey,” “so cuttered,” “so buttered,” and “moyer’d, yo” are common lexicon for phillies fans now.  the shirts he has created and sells in his online store only reinforce that sense of community.  you walk through the ticket gate and into a phillies game, see red zwr shirts all over the ballpark, and you think to yourself, “awesome, yo!  that donkey is a fan too.”

5. zwr interacts.
i’ll say this one until i’m blue in the face:  social media is supposed to be social.  if you’re not engaging your fans, then you’re not doing things the right way.  is it difficult?  it certainly can be, especially with the more fans you get.  you certainly can’t RT everything you see come across twitter from your followers, and you can’t post every email you get to your blog, but you can post enough that people still feel like they’re being heard.  the days of broadcasting information are over.  viewership includes feedback loops now, and if you’re not monitoring those channels and taking part in them then you’re only hurting yourself.

what can we learn from zwr?
we can learn a lot from zwr and the way he has built his brand.

• you need a good product, and — when talking about the internet especially — humor always wins out.
• don’t be afraid to take your content and your brand over the top because ordinary is nothing anymore, you have to be uncommon.
• building and maintaining your brand is an everyday thing.  to be really successful, your brand has to be on at all times.
• foster a sense of community through shared experiences, inside jokes, common language, etc.
• you have to be a part of your own community.  interact with your fans because they’re what make your brand successful.

i think that a lot of brands are afraid to go to some of these places for certain reasons.  they don’t want to use humor because that would seem unprofessional.  they don’t want to fully invest in their brand because they fear that they might appear to be ‘fake’ during those times they are willing to live their brand (or times when they’re not).  and they don’t like genuine, person-to-person, communication because they’re afraid of saying the wrong things.

if we take a look at those people that are successful, however, you’ll find the reasons why it’s worth taking chances and going to those places.  you’ll find the reasons why it’s worth going to the zoo with roy.

image by flickr artist, Dunechaser

there’s a distinct difference between a solution-based approach and a problem-based approach.  let me give you an example of what i mean.

i was watching a show on pbs that was talking about battleground mobility — from the time of egyptian chariots through to today’s modern, technologically advanced tanks.  i found the bit about the development of the tank to be quite interesting.

during the first world war, trench warfare had become the status quo.  miles and miles of fronts in europe and russia covered in 6ft wide trenches.  it made fighting a conventional land battle extremely deadly, and the allies were finding out just how difficult it would be to take down the german war machine.  until a technologically curious winston churchill had an idea.

churchill had seen armored cars and thought about how they could be implemented to provide cover for infantry forces whilst they attacked the german trenches.  ”little willie” was born.  after some unsuccessful attempts where “little willie” ran into a few ditches and couldn’t climb its way back out, it was modified into “the flying scotsman” which solved those issues.  the mark II was utilized to some success on the battlefield and helped to spur the innovations which have led to today’s marvels of engineering.

the developers of the first tank took a problem-based approach.  problem: “these 6ft wide trenches are literally killing us!”  to answer that problem, they needed an armored vehicle that could ride over muddy grounds, that could get itself in and out of ditches, and could traverse a 6ft gap in the ground with no issues.  it was that approach which led to the development of the british mark I, mark II, and the entire lineage of tanks from every nation around the world.  but if you had asked the generals in charge of fighting that war what their solution would be to winning the battle, they’d most certainly have said, “we need more troops! every man that jumps out of our trenches is getting killed.”

you’re asking the wrong question when you take a solution-based approach.  ”what do you need?”  it lends itself to the wrong line of thinking because people don’t always know what they need, they only think they do or — worse yet — think they know what they want.  as consultants, when we take a solution-based approach, often times we end up developing systems and solutions that provide little to no value.  the best way to combat that is through approaching clients in a different way.

don’t ask what people need.  don’t ask what people want.  ask them what they do.  interview them, and interview a handful of them.  what do you do every day?  what reports do you have to provide on a regular basis?  what outcome are you looking for?  what tools do you have available to you right now?  how long does it currently take you to accomplish your tasks?

after you interview your clients, cross-reference what they gave for their answers.  you’ll find the problem underneath it all.  and from there — knowing the problem and all the other factors that may constrain your solution(s) — you can start to formulate a strategy for the way ahead.

just look out for the ditches.

image by eqqman, flickr artist

it’s pretty easy when you’re working hard on a project to become engrossed in it.  all your energy becomes focused on one thing, and one thing only: delivering results.

be careful, though, because you might be delivering the wrong results.

when we get that kind of laser focus sometimes it’s hard to break free from it.  ”i have a deadline, i have to get this done, and i have to get it done right now.”  so, being the good workers we are, we start to work towards accomplishing that goal.  unfortunately, we sometimes go down the wrong path in getting to the finish line.  instead of looking at our available options, we pick the one we know will work even if it has consequences.  we’re not as efficient anymore.  our processes can be improved.  our tasks are disjointed.  our products don’t provide value.

these things happen, and they happen often.  it might start with priorities that all become worthless because every task now has ‘critical’ or ‘high’ importance.  it might start with a demanding client who asks you to turn a demo into a fully functional work product within a week.  but at the end of the day, it’s just something that happens.  that’s why i think — especially for those of us who work as consultants — that it’s so important we don’t forget to turn a consulting eye on ourselves.

what meetings are we having?  do they provide value?  has the mission of our project team changed?  do we still have the same goals in mind as we had 3 months before?  6 months before?  12 months before?  does our leadership structure still serve the client well?  does it serve the project team members well?

these questions and more are questions that need to be answered, but — perhaps more importantly — they need to drive tangible change.  it’s really simple to ask the question (i just did!); it’s a bit more difficult to implement changes based on the answers you get in return.

sometimes you just have to look in the mirror.

image by sarahkim, flickr artist

i wrote not too long ago about the keys to an effective presentation.  it’s strange how sometimes you don’t listen to your own advice, though, john… seriously.

guilty as charged.

i found myself this week in a situation where i had three briefs to deliver to three different audiences all within the span of a few short hours.  it’s hard to ‘get up’ for those kinds of meetings, have a short break in between, and then recapture that tough mental focus again.  (oh, and then repeat that once more for the last brief of the day)  i was feeling confident, however (i usually do), especially since i was closing it out with the same marketing brief i had given dozens upon dozens of times already.  but i should have known better than to take things lightly.

just because a quarterback knows how to play football doesn’t mean he can skip film sessions to prepare for the week ahead.  and just because a hockey player knows how to shoot a puck doesn’t mean he can skip off-ice conditioning.  you need to be prepared.  you need to work hard at being good; it doesn’t just happen.

my first brief — which was luckily the most important since it was with the client and not my own project team — actually went rather well.  i hit my major points, i handled questions, and i kept to my time limit.  i did, however, prepare for that one.  i spent about a day working on my slides and building my story.  what was i going to say?  how was i going to say it?

my second brief started off a bit like bambi standing on the ice for the first time.  i did regain some fluidity in my presentation once the audience began asking some questions, though;  overall it was an effective brief.  was it the best?  certainly not, but i got the job done.  i prepared for this presentation as well, but didn’t spend nearly as much time as i should have to storyboard everything and prepare a voice track to go along with it.

then it was time for my last brief, and i was stumbling all over myself.  i repeated far too many words and phrases making everything i said seem disjointed, i unintentionally skipped all over my slide bullets with no regard for flow, and even a few times didn’t even remember what slides i had used in the brief.  i left that meeting thinking, “wow!  could i have done anything else to mess that up even more?”

perhaps if i showed up late… or without any pants on.

knowledge of a topic is no substitute for hard work.  if you want to play with the pros, you’re going to have to hit the gym — every day.  sit in those film sessions, and ride that stationary bike.  you never know when you’re going to have to go into overtime in a game 7, so are you going to rely on your knowledge of shooting free-throws, or are you going to spend 15 minutes in the morning shoot-around knocking down baskets from the stripe?

hopefully i won’t be blogging in response to this lesson any time soon.

image by misssluluu, flickr artist

i was recently in an internal marketing meeting with one of the higher ups in the firm (when you’re a lvl 2, pretty much everyone is “higher up” than you are..), and — not to brag at all, but — i nailed it.

while i had some high esteem leaving the conference room, i thought to myself on the elevator: “gee, i sure hope to god i did nail my presentation; i’ve been giving pretty much the same brief for a year now.”  bringing a new capability to market takes a while, and i’ve probably sold my work to both internal and external stakeholders at least once a month since i started working at booz allen last february.  that’s certainly no short amount of practice time.

so the other day when i was giving my brief about how we came up with the idea, and how all the different pieces all come together to create a singular picture, about all of the benefits that can come from using this tool, they were the same words that i’ve said a hundred times over.  that’s where i think the lesson comes in at:

effective presentations start with preparation.

i’ve seen some really horrible presentations before, and one of the things that many of them have in common is a lack of conviction.  if you’re giving a presentation to a crowd of people, and you’re looking back over your shoulder constantly to your slides — or worse yet, reading off of them — how can you expect those people to believe in what you’re saying?  is this product really good?   is it actually going to make my enterprise better, faster, cheaper, or more efficient?  because you don’t seem convinced of it yourself.

you need to have, and speak with, conviction.

it is nearly impossible to create a powerpoint in a couple of hours across 2 or 3 days and deliver an effective presentation the next.  you have to have an intimate knowledge of not only the topic, but what your story is going to be.  you can only gain this familiarity through preparation.

storyboard your presentation.  take your slides, print them out, and literally storyboard them.  move content around to see where it fits best, scrap content entirely that doesn’t add value, and build a story that’s both logical and compelling.

practice your presentation.  i know it sounds stupid, but having an internal monologue or even talking to the wall will help you prepare.  you’ll formulate your words ahead of time and end up creating a speech that you internalize and can reproduce when delivering the presentation.  in addition to cutting down on the number of “but, umms” you have, it will also give you a grasp on the amount of time it will take to give it.  you already know the subject (or you wouldn’t be giving a presentation on it!), so now is the time to focus on the delivery itself.

don’t listen to other people… kind of.  if someone says your presentation doesn’t make sense the way it is, then yes, you’re going to want to look into that.  don’t, however, incorporate their feedback unless it fits your overarching plan.  remember that it’s your presentation in the end, and you’re the one who has to deliver it.  if you’re uncomfortable going into a particular sub-topic, or if others suggest that you talk about a topic that doesn’t fit into your overall story — then don’t.  it’s ok to say, “i appreciate your feedback, but that’s not exactly what my goal is here.”

so the next time you know that you have to give a presentation, ask yourself one question: do i know my presentation as much as i know the subject?

if the answer is yes, then go out and nail it.

image by hensever, flickr artist

i’ve made this argument before: social media is social.  you can’t just broadcast information; you have to listen to what’s coming back at you and respond.

recent conversation at work brought up the notion of pre-planning tweets for a client’s conference — or having pre-approved topics that one could tweet about.  while some purists might find fault with that, i don’t.

there’s no problem with pre-planning your tweets because the tweet is just the medium.  if you or a client are attending a conference or some kind of convention and you want to make sure that you capture certain topics or information in your tweets — go right ahead and do it.  would you make a phone call to a friend or a client without first planning that also?

imagine that you were planning a happy hour for your project team with a co-worker and you needed to call them to work out the details.  you know you want to talk about the location, finalize the date, and also the time.  you punch in the numbers, and they answer the phone: “hey, how’s your [insert day of the week] going?”

you: “i thought we could have the happy hour at paddy’s pub.”

them: “uhh, that sounds fine.. who else is coming?”

you: “we should go on thursday night because not everyone comes into the office on friday.”

them: “but they have better specials on wednesday nights..”

you: “4pm should work best for everyone, so parents can pick up their kids from daycare at 6.”

them: “… dude, have you even been listening to me?”

you: “awesome.  this was a great talk!!”

them: [click]

there’s nothing wrong with planning what you’d like to say to people in tweets, phone calls, email, or on any other medium.  what’s wrong is when you don’t respond to what people are saying to you because you ‘have a plan’ as to what you’re supposed to talk about.

this is the fundamental problem that i have with a lot of social media efforts.  if you own a bar, and someone asks in a tweet: “are you going to have the game on tonight?” and you don’t send a response to that person — that’s bad.  if you’re the source of updates from an nfl team’s twitter handle and you don’t RT or engage in conversation with fans who are following you — that’s bad.  if you constantly post links to news and blog posts about the newest apple product, or research into how virtual communications make the office space more collaborative and never reply to people who want to talk about those links — that’s bad.

just think: what would happen if your phone calls were like your social media?

how many people would hang up on you?

on the surface, it seems like a valid complaint.  who wants to check 5 web sites, and all the rest, rather than the previous 4?  but the problem isn’t really the amount of work you have to do, it’s that you have a problem managing your time.

no one says you have to answer every email as soon as it enters your inbox, or that you have to answer your phone and txt messages.  that’s a choice that you’ve made.  instead of looking at the amount of work you have to do — or the number of sites or information/communications channels that you have to monitor — start looking at the way you organize your day.

• manage your inbox.  microsoft outlook gives you the ability to create rules for incoming messages, so why not use some?  parse your incoming messages into certain folders, or create and make use of categories — then, once your messages clean themselves up automatically, create a schedule.  only answer “project team” emails a handful of times each day.  answer “corporate communications” emails once a week.  answer “daily status” emails once a day.  whatever you choose, stick to the schedule unless there’s an urgent need.  email is not real-time; spoiler: it was never intended to be!
• screen your phone calls.  utilize your voicemail… heavily.  client calling?  don’t answer it.  boss calling?  don’t answer that either.  ”WHAT?!  are you crazy?”  no, i’m not — here’s why:  you should always have a plan when talking on the phone with someone.  because you don’t have visual communication, your words are all you have, and you need to make sure that you know what you’re talking about.  the client has a question, and your boss needs a status; this is vital information to have before engaging in a conversation with them so that you can prepare.  not only do you seem more intelligent, but you’ll also spend less time on the phone.  unless you know why the person is calling, let your voicemail answer, and — again — create a schedule for checking your voicemail.  check every day before lunch (people hate to chat when they’re on the way out the door in 15 minutes for qdoba) and sometime in the afternoon.  but whatever you do always remember, return every call every day because people hate silence.
• make information work for you.  in a world of RSS feeds and yammer, information comes to you if you let it.  if you’re checking 4 web sites a day for work, why not use an RSS reader or add RSS feeds to outlook instead?  you don’t need to be checking a site if there’s no new information, so don’t.  using tools like blogs and micro-blogs such as yammer and twitter (if adopted by your project team) can help you collect information in the same place, categorize it, and push notifications.  information will come to you if you do your part to build a platform that will support it.

the points above can be simplified into two simple rules: 1) automate what you can, and 2) create a schedule for dealing with that which you can’t.  if you’re feeling overwhelmed, chances are you don’t have a work problem — you just have a time management problem.

it’s not easy to do.  it takes complete buy-in and discipline, but if you can master your schedule you’ll be surprised at how much you can accomplish.

oh, hold on a second… i’m getting a phone call…

when you set goals, you want to make them SMART:

• specific
• measurable
• attainable
• relevant
• time-bound*

example of a really bad goal: “lose weight this year.” first of all, losing weight is a stupid goal to begin with.  most people don’t realize that muscle weighs more than fat does, and working out might cause you to actually gain weight.  you should be looking for a better resolution.

example of a really good goal: “run in four 5k events for charity this year.” it’s specific, not just a random notion of weight loss.  it’s measurable because you can mark off events as the days pass through the year;  make it one run each quarter.  it’s certainly attainable.  asking yourself to run 4 marathons might not be, but a 5k is much more manageable and takes less time to train to.  it’s not an ‘always on’ kind of goal and allows yourself some wiggle room.  it’s relevant because your overall mission is to be healthier.  your soul will feel better too because you’re doing it all for charity.  and that asterisk i placed above is the most important for making goals… although i don’t necessarily see it in the same way as the textbooks do.  instead of time-bound i say to make that T in SMART stand for ‘tell everybody you know’.  telling other people puts that goal up-front and center.  you can’t hide from it because you just might have someone say to you in june, “hey, i thought you were running those 5k things.  what happened to that?”

so when it comes down to business, are you making SMART goals for your organization?  for yourself?  for your career?

it’s a new year, and there are no excuses.  come up with smart goals, write them down, and make sure you’re taking steps towards getting them every day.  start with something specific, measure your progress, make sure it’s feasible, ensure that it’s in keeping with your overall mission, and tell everybody about it.  you haven’t failed in the past because you weren’t good enough; it’s because you weren’t reaching for the right goals.