image by Reini68, flickr artist

when was the last time you had a good idea?  one of those eureka moments?

i remember back in college my roommate and i were discussing which of the honey bunches of oats ‘flavors’ we enjoyed the most.  after trying pretty much all of them, i told him with conviction that hbo with strawberries was my favorite.  i said:  ”the thing i love about it is how your milk turns strawberry-flavored afterwards.”

immediately i thought, ‘hey — they actually make that stuff!’ and i shouted out with such joy, “dude!  what if i make strawberry milk, and then pour that into my hbo with strawberries?  it’s double the strawberry!  how awesome would that be?!”

the very next time we went to the grocery store i bought some strawberry nesquik mix and put my theory to the test.  naturally it ended up being horrendous, but it was still a good idea at the time.

the reason i mention this is because good ideas (even the ones that fail) are almost always a product of some kind of external stimulation.  these ideas come to you through conversations, through listening, through watching other people.  this is why working in distributed teams causes such problems for so many.

this notion of “you have your job, i have my job, and we’ll call each other every tuesday and discuss the status of things,” doesn’t work.  it separates out the work being done from the actual creative process.  as leaders and managers, it’s important that we create environments that support the creative process rather than work against it.

it’s not always possible to have people in the same geography — i think we all know that.  business is global, and so too must your workforce be.  but we can certainly provide them with the tools they need to become better collaborators.  let your employees join and use social networks.  join them on those networks.  become part of the process yourself.  stop using email as your primary means of communicating work.  hold more video conferences and web meetings with visuals.

for those who are co-located, don’t put them in cubicle farms.  give them offices and more than enough spaces where they can come together with their thoughts, challenges, and proposals.  give them time in the day to work on something that’s entirely non-work related.  pro-bono work that they want to work on.  lessons learned from those efforts will carry over into the billable ones.

stop treating people as if they’re just cogs that can be placed anywhere.  find out who works well together and put them in the same space.  if it means moving someone from the 1st floor of your building to the 4th floor, then so be it.  throw those old “organizational standards” out the window because they don’t work anymore.

ideas do not occur in a bubble; so stop putting your employees in them.

that alone would be excellent advice, but i’m talking about a different kind of dressing up. i’m talking about dressing up your business.

people perceive certain things, whether it be right or wrong, when they look at your company. it’s natural — life likes good looking things! there have been studies that show the peacock owes its livelihood to looking good. scientists clipped the brightly colored feathers from male peacocks, and left other males alone as a control group. those without their feathers clipped saw much greater rates of mating with the females in the group. throwing evolutionary caution to the wind, the lady peacocks choose brightly colored males because the more feathers they have, the more viral the male appears to be. during the mating season, other brightly colored birds like the many variations of parrots and parakeets, will sit on the highest branches in the sun so that their feathers are more visible and appear more brightly colored than their rival males.

the point is you need to look good. you have to dress for success. don’t ever underestimate what fancy looks can do for your business. everything about your company has to make you appear more “brightly colored” than your competitors. if you sell produce — make sure your produce is always piled high. if you sell milk — make sure your refrigerators are always packed with milk. if you sell computers — make sure your floor models always have clean mice, keyboards, and monitors. keep the floors mopped and the carpets cleaned. if the carpeting on your office building’s steps is worn out — replace it on the weekend with some extra carpet. if a light bulb is burned out — replace it with a new bulb. buy the more expensive plastic bags. go with frank sinatra or duke ellington for your elevator music instead of yanni. michael bolton may have been hip at one time, but the classics never fade.

it’s the small things about your business that make the biggest impact.

and not just to your customers either. give your employees new chairs — give them the BEST chairs. they deserve it, don’t they? buy new microwaves and coffee makers for the break rooms. they’ll see how you’re dedicated to them, and they’ll return the feeling. when they see the rest of the office or wherever you happen to work looking clean and orderly, they’ll also be clean an orderly — and not just in where they work, but how they work. i’d bet you would see an increase in quality of products and quality of service.

and as far as clients go, there’s never a second chance at a first impression — but there is a first chance at a second impression, and those are sometimes the most important ones! making changes signifies to your customers, “hey look, we’re changing with the times. we’re constantly making ourselves better. why don’t you partner with us and make sure that you don’t get left in the past?”

the way you present yourself says a lot about you. equally the same, the way you present your company says a lot about your company. be the peacock and dress for success.

dare i say it — the cost of a used toner cartridge is more than the cost of a new one.

you’re a worker. you work hard every day. you’ve been working especially hard lately because there’s a lot of important work going on and you have to get it all done on time. so you drive into work one day and you log on to your computer, you check emails and some are worthwhile but most of them aren’t. then you get a phone call from your boss that a certain work item needs to get done, and it needs to be done yesterday.

hurriedly you start working and crunch numbers, or design a new prototype with changes from the client, or focus on a hardware emergency, and you get it done! crisis averted … or so you think.

when you finish your work and walk on over to the printer to get the report that has to be on your boss’ desk right now, you see a flashing message: “TONER LOW”. you — not being one to want to turn a mountain into a mole hill — figure, “this happens all the time, i’ll just shake the cartridge and it’ll print darker.” so you pop open the printer, do your ‘maintenance’ and head back to your desk to try printing again. you do, only this time there’s a paper jam because the cartridge wasn’t sitting right. so now you’re opening up secret passageways into the inner workings of your office printer that you should really not be looking at let alone touching, but a call to the help desk won’t resolve anything.

you find the problem, remove the paper, try printing again, and finally it prints — and this time it even prints well. you grab it, only to realize you have inky hands, and there’s now your fingerprints all over your paper. needless to say you’re quite agitated at the present moment. things do, finally, get situated and you angrily return to your desk, completely fed up with the whole debacle. a co-worker then asks you a question, and you don’t feel ‘in the mood’ to help anyone at this point. it’s been a long morning and it’s only 8:38 — so you say, “i don’t know. go figure it out yourself.” now your co-worker feels attacked, and can’t seem to understand why you’re so angry so now she’s angry. she tries to figure out something that’s so easy for you that it would have taken 2 minutes to explain, but she’s new to the team and doesn’t understand everything yet. now she’s frustrated and angry because it’s already lunch time and she hasn’t accomplished anything.

there’s a client visit at your location that day and on her way out of the building she passes a representative from the client and let’s the door close on their face. so now the client is angry and can’t believe they’ve been treated so disrespectfully. the client goes into the meeting with an angry disposition and finds fault in just about everything your sales team is selling them. after the terrible 3 hour meeting absolutely no progress has been made to re-upping the contract and, in fact, has actually hurt your chances of getting that client to sign on for another 3 years.

three days later your company gets the notification that you won’t be providing your services for the client, and that it’s your main competitor instead. and all of it because of one bad toner cartridge.

outrageous? of course it is. unlikely to happen? that assumption is probably true… but it’s possible! it could happen. this story illustrates how important your employees are to your organization and that keeping your employees happy is extremely important.

make sure that everything works, all the time. ceiling lights, bathroom soap dispensers, door locks (and stops!), vending machines, power outlets — everything. why? because a bad toner cartridge might cost you more than you think.