[Updated] Breakthrough performance

June 15, 2005

For the past two weeks, I've been participating in Lisa Haneberg's "2 Weeks 2 A Breakthrough " (2w2aB) program. Lisa, who I discovered through her Management Craft blog, is also the author of "H.I.M.M. - High Impact Middle Management" which is a tremendous resource for managers at all levels.

Anyway, I was part of the 2w2aB program, which involved picking a specific goal and being willing to accept coaching and suggestions from Lisa every day for 14 days. It also involved a personal commitment to spend about an hour per day working on specific types of activities to advance toward your stated goal.

This was one of those "hurts so good" kinds of activities for me. My goal was to really kickstart a new project which resulted from me taking on some new responsibilities at work. This new project required me to do a lot of networking, discovery, and evangelism and really pushed me out of my comfort zone in a lot of ways (I don't yearn to do cold calls, I assure you).

Lisa's approach was very effective at forcing me to approach my work in a more reasoned, discipline-driven way. It also encouraged me to enlist others in my goal and established a daily discipline routine that I think will help me beyond Day 14 of the program.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Lisa for giving me the chance to participate in the Pilot of this program, and I look forward to what she puts in place as a result of this (she is running 4 pilot teams through the process, in an effort to improve her methodology).

My main take-aways from this process:

I reaffirmed the importance of specific, written goals
I realized the power of small, persistent actions toward a goal
I discovered the effectiveness of asking / allowing someone else to poke me on a daily basis to keep me focused on my goal
I found I could make far more progress in two weeks than I'd ever have thought possible
I confirmed that discipline is not just a choice - it's a bunch of choices and opportunities - if you missed one opportunity, get right back on track by siezing the next

This process reminded me of something a friend of mine once told me: "If you figure out what you really want, and ask for it, you just might get it."

The breakthroughs are ours for the taking. Thanks, Lisa.

Update June 15, 2005:

Last night, I got to the end of Lisa's book, H.I.M.M. - High Impact Middle Management, and there is some great information toward the end of the book about how to achieve performance breakthroughs, including how to coach others to achieve their own breakthroughs. Good stuff.

Listen up

June 11, 2005

I just read a great article on Success Begins Today about how to become a better (more effective) listener. Check it out - and there are a few more follow-on articles related to listening, including how to become a better marketer by listening.

Hire on... Fire on...

June 10, 2005

I was talking with a mentor of mine the other day, brainstorming for a new position I'm designing. I shared my draft position description with her and she said, "This looks great, but these are all things you'll hire on. What are the things you'll fire on?"

When I looked puzzled, she explained that people tend to get caught up in experience, previous positions held, and things like that. Those are the things they tend to "hire on."

When people choose to fire someone, it's not so much about the what they do, but how they do it. This is often referred to as "fit," or "cultural qualities" -- and those are the things you "fire on."

She helped me brainstorm a list of things to test for during the hiring process, such as:

Calm and steady demeanor under pressure
Intuitive with good listening skills
Comfort in ambiguous situtations
Balance of "task" and "people" management skills
Honesty / integrity
and so on...

I knew some of this stuff intuitively, but now that I've articulated the things I'm looking for, I've designed some questioning strategies to help determine whether my candidates meet these criteria.

So once you know what you'll hire on, figure out what you'd fire on and take some actions to minimize the chance you'll have to fire at all.

Spheres of influence

June 7, 2005

It seems that a lot of the people I spend time with are trying different approaches and systems to get more control of their time. If you've visited me here very often you'll know I'm one of those people, as well. I’m feeling philosophical at the moment (and a bit verbose), and asking myself a hard question:

When you manage to free up some time, what will you do with it?

I’ve traditionally spent my ‘spare time’ on things closer to home (including lots of selfish things). I've decided to challenge myself to expand the value of where I spend that time, and have developed a sort of model to help me evaluate my choices.

I think of this in terms of concentric layers of a sphere; hence the “spheres of influence.”

Self	Invest some of your time in your health, your skills, and do things to make your lot in life more enjoyable. This is the "pay yourself first" approach - your health and well being must be maintained, or not much else will matter.
Faith	Faith, religion, or core beliefs are important to most of us. Spend time on these things and they will help you strive for greater things. The time you spend here will also flavor what you do in the layers farther out.
Family	Invest time with your loved ones by taking an interest in what they do, and sharing what you do with them. Be genuine and transparent, and strive to teach them with patience and understanding. Learn from each other in good times and bad. Establish traditions and create common goals.
Friends and community	Spend time with friends that share your interests. Spend more time with those that lift you up, and less time with those that bring you down. Challenge each other, support each other, and gather together to increase your influence. Community can mean many things: your neighborhood, your company, virtual communities (such as the blogsphere), your city, your church, and more. Spend your time on things that make a positive difference in your community. Share what you know and what you have for the greater good. Influence your communities to engage in activities that provide value beyond themselves (into other spheres and communities).
Country	An extended form of community, your country deserves its own category. It represents a wide array of values, priorities, challenges, and opportunities – all mingled together in an interdependent system. Some spend their time in formal service to their countries. Others become active in politics or civil rights. We all contribute (or detract) based on how we honor (or dishonor) the norms of society within our country.
World and planet	Whether we like it or not, we’re all part of the world, and our actions, decisions, tolerance, and intolerance flavor the world community. Our decisions about politics, consumption habits, morality, and other choices we make all have implications to the world, and the planet upon which we live. Spending time on improving the state of world relations, the environment, or other large-scale issues can have far-reaching effects.

The model above is just one way of thinking about your spheres of influence, as each of us has our own way to defining our existence in relation to others. It’s kind of abstract, so why would I bring it up at all? (It’s not because Portland is the meth capital of the world, either.)

I have been reflecting on the areas of my life from which I derive the most satisfaction, and I realize I get the most out of activities that positively address multiple spheres of influence. For example, I have mentioned in the past that I am active as a leader in the Boy Scouts of America program. This rewards me on many levels:

Self	I become better at leadership, improve my skills in many areas, and participate in fun physical activities.
Faith	“Duty to God” is part of the Boy Scout oath, and observance of faith (multidenominational) is a part of the program.
Family	I get to spend time with my son, and am able to help him learn. He is a Patrol Leader, and it is great to see him develop his leadership skills.
Friends and community	I have made many new friends, and we frequently engage in community service projects. I also strive to be a positive example for boys without strong male role models. I’ve found that I learn more by teaching, and I have the opportunity to teach boys within the troop about many things. This often requires me to learn more so I can be an effective teacher.
Country	The Scouts encourage the boys to learn about their country, and understand how to be responsible citizens.
World and planet	There is strong emphasis within the Scouting program to be a responsible shepherd of the planet, with mantras like “Leave No Trace” and teaching Scouts the Outdoor Code so they will learn respect for nature. And, I like to think my support of Scouting is helping more boys become responsible contributors within the world.

I also believe that long term success requires us to impart a measure of balance on what we do. This is nothing new – take workaholism, for example.

· Workaholics work too much, which means they spend too much time focusing on a specific type of Community.

· Working too much means they neglect Family, and their home life and family relationships suffer.

· Working too much causes them to neglect Self, so they become sick and/or stressed out.

Live like this long enough, and they become sick enough that they can no longer spend all their time on work. Congratulations, workaholic, your body’s just done an intervention! And your family may be so hacked off at you, that you won’t get much help. Not good.

Whether or not you agree with the labels I used for my “spheres of influence” model, we all operate within something akin to this. To increase your enjoyment and sense of accomplishment in the world, think about how you use your discretionary time and try to make more choices that take you to a larger sphere of influence.

In the spirit of my mantra of “Take responsibility for your own well being,” find activities that influence you on multiple layers at once. I think you’ll find it worthwhile.

Can you trust your gut?

June 1, 2005

In Malcolm Gladwell's 'Blink' we're exposed to the concept of "rapid cognition," which describes how people often make very accurate, snap decisions based on very little input. This is a concept known as "thin slicing."

Of course, I was curious so I've been reading up on the subject. I discovered that this phenomenon has been the subject of a number of 'thin slicing' studies in which subjects are exposed to tiny snippets of information and measured on how accurate their snap judgements were. It seems that, in many cases, our rapid cognition works remarkably well.

In the article "Thin slices of life," Lea Winerman describes a 1993 study at Tufts University in which researchers videotaped 13 graduate teaching fellows as they taught class. They then took 3 random 6-second clips of each teacher, and combined them into one 18-second silent video clip. They showed the 18-second clip to students who did not know the teachers, and asked them to rate them on 13 different variables (such as "accepting," "active," "competent," etc.)

These scores were then compared to the end-of-semester ratings on the same 13 factors from the teachers' actual students. The researchers were shocked at how accurate the test subjects were at predicting how good the teachers would be, based on these small, random video clips.

This is interesting data, and indicates that you should really listen to your gut. However, this is an area where I think the principle of "trust, but verify" applies.

Consider this: I also read another study in which a bunch of hiring managers were asked to select the best candidates for positions based on standard interviewing techniques. The applicants were also put through structured testing to evaluate their "fit" based on a number of criteria. Some applicants were hired based on test scores, and some were hired based on the managers' traditional hiring tecniques.

The hiring managers were all experienced, and all thought they could do a better job than some structured test in selecting the right people. However, a year into the study, the group hired based on test scores was significantly outperforming the group hired using traditional interviews (as measured by job performance, team fit, results, and whether or not they were still employed by the hiring company).

In the article I read, they summarized it by saying that people often hire on "gut" but end up firing on things that may not be apparent at the gut level. These things tend to be persistent personality traits, work ethic issues, and other aspects that may not be apparent in short, structured interactions.

So, to sum it up, I believe you can trust your gut, but your gut feel may not be sufficient for some decisions. When you're making a major decision like hiring people to join your team, verify that gut feel. If structured testing is an option for you, use it. If not, spend more time checking references, use team interviewing, probe for experience and situational "stories" which might indicate issues that will surface over the long term.

Trust, but verify.

[Updated] Breakthrough performance

Listen up

Hire on... Fire on...

Spheres of influence

Can you trust your gut?

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