Posts Tagged success
don’t give them an excuse
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.
leadership in the innovation age
image by ortizmj12, flickr artist
one of the higher-ranking members at booz allen has an internal blog titled, “lead, or get out of the way!”
i certainly appreciate his willingness to to pass on the knowledge that he has learned over his distinguished career — and in such a contemporary form — but i have to say that i think it’s wrong.
at least in the innovation age it is.
i’d like to change my colleague’s statement to become “lead, then get out of the way!” and here’s why…
don’t shy away from risk. roll around in it.
i was recently listening to a podcast on itunes u called the design thinking: a new type of leadership. the speaker for the event is a man by the name of banny banerjee, an associate professor at stanford’s institute of design (or d.school). in his talk, he mentioned something that really resonated with me, and it was about risk.
“risk aversion is actually very risky behavior because with every moment that you’re looking at risk averseness you are also throwing away a lot of seemingly improbable ideas, but those are the ones that might allow you to make a leap rather than just make an incremental advancement.”
case study: the @zoowithroy brand
i have really been enamored with a certain blog — pardon me — bolg this summer for many reasons, namely the brand its creator has been able to forge using microsoft paint and 140 characters. it really hit me a few weeks ago when fox saturday baseball did a mid-inning exposé on a shirt that an impetuous phillies fan bought from the zoo with roy online store and mailed to colorado rockies manager jim tracy’s office. this national exposure followed after zwr himself already appeared on espn’s first take. talk about local celebrity; in philadelphia circles, zwr isn’t just a celebrity — he’s a folk hero.
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).
what can we learn from the beautiful game?
image by prettyfriendship, flickr artist
i like drawing parallels between sports and life. there are so many lessons that we can learn just by taking a look at things through a different lens. the beautiful game is no exception.
it’s world cup time right now; for me this is a huge deal. the only way i can describe it to non-football enthusiasts is to take thanksgiving, wrap it up in christmas, and then get rid of it for 4 years. it’s massive.
as i’ve watched the games and results unfold this year, i’ve had to rub my eyes in disbelief on more than one occasion. most notably, for me, the first group-stage match between spain and switzerland where the swiss won with a 1-0 final score. if you look beyond the score to the match statistics you see today’s lesson.
official stats for the game: spain 63% possession, 12 corner kicks, 24 shots… only 8 on target. switzerland 37% possession, 3 corner kicks, 8 shots… but 3 made it on target and of course one resulted in that crucial goal.
don’t forget to add the ‘fun’
image by Tony M...., flickr artist
i was just at the grocery store picking up supplies for the week.
when i got home, i took out the bottle of vitamin water i had purchased as part of those supplies and cracked the top. the flavor was called “spark” and was one that i hadn’t tried before, so — being new to me — i held up the bottle to read the label.
to my amusement, the text was upside-down. i turned the bottle to read it and, the label — the text i was reading — talked about the action which i had just performed (turning the bottle upside-down). it closed with a clever joke, and it was at that point that i realized what just happened.
i was having fun!
fun from a plastic vitamin water bottle? yes. (well, more specifically it was the label itself.) so i started to ask myself a very simple question: why, when we create products, do we always leave out the fun factor? when did we all become mr. soggy pants?
“the common man goes nowhere” — herb brooks
image courtesy of the herb brooks training center
“you can’t be common, the common man goes nowhere; you have to be uncommon.” — legendary hockey coach, herb brooks
of all of herb brooks’ quotes, i love this one the most. i don’t know that it’s something i do intentionally, or if it’s something in my natural programming, but i don’t do common work.
over the last week or so, i’ve heard some pretty high praises from my client. the program manager said of me in a management meeting, “john scardino, that dude is phenomenal.” and just about a week after that comment was made, another member of my client’s organization said, “not to put any pressure on you, but you’re going to save [this project].”
i only know how to do things one way: the best way that i know how to do it. so, to me, i’m not so sure that i’m really doing anything that’s truly special. i see coworkers all the time logging long hours and doing a lot of great things. the stuff my officemate, m. gregory white I, is doing makes me shake my head in astonishment. i say it no matter where i go: there are better people than me. but there’s something that seems to separate me from the rest.
i’m uncommon.
how do you measure leadership?
it’s easy to measure one’s proficiency in a technical skill (how many widgets you build, how many lines of code you’ve written), and it’s easy to count training courses and seminars to show how you’ve been ‘growing’ as a person and learning new things. we know how to find experts. we look for collegiate degrees. we look for years of experience in a given field. they may not exactly be great means of quantifying an ‘expert’ but they’re certainly given weight by many people.
but how do you measure leadership?
Read the rest of this entry »
make SMART goals that work
this really is consulting 101 stuff here, but it’s also important to point out since it’s the new year and people are undoubtedly going to make resolutions that they end up giving up on in the end. listen up, because this is important…
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.
always plan on success
image by csitscenter, flickr collection
i was in a meeting recently with a senior associate in my firm, and spent the vast amount of the 4 hours we had together furiously taking notes. unfortunately i couldn’t write as fast as he was talking, so i ended up not capturing all of the information that was there for the taking. for the most part, the vast majority of the time was spent discussing our earned value management capabilities at booz allen. we did talk some about business in general and building capabilities that can grow and expand, and it was from this discussion that my largest, boldest, “even used a highlighter on it” note came from. he said something to me that made a lot of sense:
always plan on success.
it’s a great quote. you may mistakingly take it as an inspirational message, but that’s not at all what he intended. it was actually meant to scare us, and remind us that we need to be prepared to succeed. to be successful in business, it’s not enough to have a good idea. even having passion and being a hard worker isn’t enough. when you’re trying to stand up or start up something brand new, you have to have certain things in place to handle the change in environment. nothing can kill a good idea quite like being unprepared to succeed. if you aren’t ready to expand with the business, you’ll undoubtedly experience growing pains – much like wearing a shoe that’s two sizes too small.
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