Unreasonable Clients

"Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs."

- Farrah Gray

From Seth Godin:

Who gets your best work?
 

If you reserve your best effort for the irritable boss, the never-pleased client and the bully of a customer, then you've bought into a system that rewards the very people who are driving you nuts. It's no wonder you have clients like that--they get your best work.

On the other hand, when you make it clear (and then deliver) on the promise that your best work goes to those that are clear, respectful and patient, you become a specialist in having customers just like that.

One of the largest turning points of my career was firing the client who accounted for a third of my company's work. We were becoming really good at tolerating the stress that came from this engagement, and it became clear to me that we were about to sign up for a lifetime of clients like that.

Set free to work for those that we believed deserved our best work, we replaced the lost business in less than six months.

Years ago, I heard the story of a large retail financial services company that did the math and discovered that fewer than 5% of their customers were accounting for more than 80% of their customer service calls--and less than 1% of their profit. They sent these customers a nice note, let them know that they wouldn't be able to service them properly going forward, and offered to help them transfer their accounts to a competitor. With the time freed up, they could then have their customer service people double down on the customers that actually mattered to them... grease, but without the squeaky wheel part.

No, you can't always fire those that are imperious or bullies. But yes, you can figure out how to dig even deeper for those that aren't. That means you won't take advantage of their good nature, or settle for giving them merely what they will accept. Instead, you treat the good guys with even more effort and care and grace than you ever would have exerted for the tyrants.

The word will spread.

[The other alternative is a fine one, if you're up for it... specialize in the worst possible clients and bosses, the least gratifying assignments. You'll stand out in an uncrowded field! The mistake is thinking you're doing one and actually doing neither by doing both.]

7 Epiphanies of a Coach

"The most expensive thing a person can own is a closed mind."

I spent over 16 years in 2 Fortune 1000 companies and another 15 years with a mid-sized international company.  For all but 2 and half of those years I was in management and executive positions.  One day not too along ago, I was asked "from all that experience what were the key things you brought to your coaching practice"?  I was speechless for a moment while I thought and then said with a lot of conviction "nothing".

Well, I'm sure this is not entirely true, but when I was asked on the spot all that came to mind were the things I was shocked to learn later that I had been doing wrong all those years.

Over the last 6 years I have had many awakenings - but I have put together 7 epiphanies that have really shattered my old beliefs and helped me find more effective ways to build a great business. I think you will be surprised at what some of these are.

Click here to for those epiphanies (10 minutes).

Motivating Others

"Good leaders take people where they want to go. Great leaders take people where they necessarily don't want to go, but ought to be."

- Roselyn Carter

"A first grader came home and told her parents she was the Leader today in class. The Dad said oh really what did you do as the Leader? She responded, 'hold the door open for the other kids'."

From Dan Pink:

Watch this 10 minute video on what motivates people and what doesn't.

From Steve Chandler's, 100 Ways to Motivate Others:

Motivating others requires a connection to people's deep desires. It's not just about loading them down with a lot of "how to" information. Transformation is more important than information. Action is everything. 

My Input: I don't know of a better way to do this than the Weekly Coaching Conversation. Watch this short video to demonstrate the tool and explain how to use it in your Weekly Coaching conversations.

https://youtu.be/F8RQFuf5q5w

So a great motivator of others will value testing over trusting. She won't waste time getting her people to trust change, or trust the system-  she will work on ways to test these things.

Change in the workplace and the world is exponential now. It is no longer linear, predictable change. It is more like the absolutely unexpected shocking change described so dramatically in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's, The Black Swan. Because of this, great motivators are now welcoming change and helping their people see all change as a creative opportunity.

Organizations are more vulnerable than ever to suddenly disappearing. They can become obsolete in a heartbeat. And rather than have that be frightening, one who masters motivating himself and others finds that exciting.

Warren Buffet's Leadership Lessons

 "I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business."

"Without more output of desired goods and services per working hour - that's one measure of productivity gains - an economy inevitably stagnates."

- Warren Buffett

From Geoff Colvin, Fortune:

In his annual letter to shareholders this year, three key leadership traits stand out and explain the secret to Berkshire's and the country's prosperity - labor productivity (see below).

Warren Buffett's annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway  BRK.A 0.24%  shareholders, released last Saturday, is scrutinized worldwide for economic and investing insights. Understandably so; in 2015 Berkshire had, guess what, another knockout year. Yet I can't recall ever seeing it read as a leadership document. That's what it is, though, and this year's letter shows why Buffett has been so extraordinarily successful not just as in investor but also as a business leader. Three traits stand out.

- He's optimistic.

What comes through most strongly, as it does almost every year, is a powerfully upbeat attitude. No one has ever answered the call of someone who says, "Our situation is hopeless. Follow me." Effective leaders have figured out how to be optimistic while simultaneously confronting reality, regardless of the circumstances. Buffett does that this year by responding to the presidential candidates, who "can't stop speaking about our country's problems (which, of course, only they can solve). As a result of this negative drumbeat, many Americans now believe that their children will not live as well as they themselves do." Nonsense, Buffett says: "The babies being born in America today are the luckiest crop in history."

Unfounded wishful thinking? Through simple math - this is the confronting reality part - Buffett supports his argument. He shows that even "the much-lamented 2%" annual growth of America's economy in recent years "delivers astounding gains" in just one generation. And he's right. At that rate, and if America's population continues to expand as it's doing now, real per-capita GDP will grow 34.4% in 25 years. That is indeed a giant increase, and Buffett explains its full meaning at some length. By the time he's done, it's hard to dispute his conclusion, based on hard facts, that "America's kids will live far better than their parents did."

- He explains what he's doing so that anyone can understand it. 

Trusting leaders is important, but we all feel more comfortable knowing what they're doing and why. Part of Buffett's genius has long been his ability to explain the financial workings of a massive conglomerate in language that real people use. This year he devotes most of the letter to explaining just how each of Berkshire's main businesses operates and how each performed. I defy anyone who reads those pages to come away confused. On the contrary, you come away thinking, "This guy knows what he's doing." Because he doesn't ask you to trust him, you trust him more.

- He admits mistakes and makes no attempt to sugarcoat them. 

I'm not aware of any other leader who every year acknowledges his errors as openly as Buffett does. Again this year he admits "serious errors I made in my job of capital allocation" and mistakes "in evaluating either the fidelity or the ability of incumbent managers or ones I later appointed." And then, as usual, he goes further: "I will commit more errors; you can count on that." Again, this makes you more confident in him, not less. Yet most leaders haven't learned that lesson.

American Express  AXP 1.70%  CEO Ken Chenault, a leader whom Buffett admires greatly - Berkshire owns almost 16% of Amex - says "The role of a leader is to define reality and give hope." You won't find that done any better than Buffett does it in this year's letter.

Here is an outtake of his annual letter that spells out how vital productivity improvement is to the profitability and prosperity of this country.

The Secret Sauce - Productivity

Jorge Paulo and his associates (Heinz) could not be better partners. We share with them a passion to buy, build and hold large businesses that satisfy basic needs and desires. Their method, at which they have been extraordinarily successful, is to buy companies that offer an opportunity for eliminating many unnecessary costs and then - very promptly - to make the moves that will get the job done. 

Their actions significantly boost productivity, the all-important factor in America's economic growth over the past 240 years. Without more output of desired goods and services per working hour - that's the measure of productivity gains - an economy inevitably stagnates. At much of corporate America, truly major gains in productivity are possible, a fact offering opportunities to Jorge Paulo and his associates.

Earlier, I told you how our partners at Kraft Heinz root out inefficiencies, thereby increasing output per hour of employment. That kind of improvement has been the secret sauce of America's remarkable gains in living standards since the nation's founding in 1776. Unfortunately, the label of "secret" is appropriate: Too few Americans fully grasp the linkage between productivity and prosperity. To see that connection, let's look first at the country's most dramatic example - farming - and later examine three Berkshire-specific areas.

In 1900, America's civilian work force numbered 28 million. Of these, 11 million, a staggering 40% of the total, worked in farming. The leading crop then, as now, was corn. About 90 million acres were devoted to its production and the yield per acre was 30 bushels, for a total output of 2.7 billion bushels annually. Then came the tractor and one innovation after another that revolutionized such keys to farm productivity as planting, harvesting, irrigation, fertilization and seed quality. Today, we devote about 85 million acres to corn. Productivity, however, has improved yields to more than 150 bushels per acre, for an annual output of 13-14 billion bushels. Farmers have made similar gains with other products. Increased yields, though, are only half the story: The huge increases in physical output have been accompanied by a dramatic reduction in the number of farm laborers ("human input"). Today about three million people work on farms, a tiny 2% of our 158-million-person work force. Thus, improved farming methods have allowed tens of millions of present-day workers to utilize their time and talents in other endeavors, a reallocation of human resources that enables Americans of today to enjoy huge quantities of non-farm goods and services they would otherwise lack. It's easy to look back over the 115-year span and realize how extraordinarily beneficial agricultural innovations have been - not just for farmers but, more broadly, for our entire society. We would not have anything close to the America we now know had we stifled those improvements in productivity. (It was fortunate that horses couldn't vote.)

Vern Harnish's take on the Letter:

Buffett highlights on p. 21 how his various companies focus on productivity - and he goes on to list the huge gains many have made. This is a weakness for most small to mid-market firms which have a tendency to just throw people at a problem or look at labor as an expense and hire on the cheap and get what they pay for.

For many industries good measures are Revenue and Profit per employee. For Berkshire, it's $584,000 and $48,163 respectively for its 361,270 employees ($814,675 Rev/Emp for Primerica!). Take a moment to calculate yours and then for a large company in your similar space. In general, I find the FORTUNE 500 generate 3x the revenue per employee of their smaller counterparts. This is a SIGNIFICANT issue.

Keys to increasing productivity from Rick Wallace:

• Think and act like your Total Cost of labor is an investment, not an expense.
• Uncover the right productivity metrics to benchmark, set goals and track, measure and celebrate.
• A Players - pay them more but get A players in every position. Again it is not what you pay them (expense) but the return you get on every dollar. (Container Store - pays 50% more than the industry but gets 3X the productivity.)
• Focus on People (Coach) - help them get better at what they do, help them reach their goals, get them engaged with the team and the company.
• 2 Second LEAN - Paul Aker's simple yet powerful program for empowering employees to clean, sort, sustain every morning and then observing waste and "fixing what bugs them". Empowering everyone, every day, to make their jobs easier and more enjoyable (secret - more productive in the process, engaged with their jobs and a great place to work.)

Uncover the secret to success in business - quit thinking that labor is an expense and start looking at it as your biggest investment and what the return is on that investment. Your profits will increase, your business will be less chaotic, it will not rely on you to work but instead work for you. Your employees will like working there.

There are only two areas you can increase profit to any large degree: Gross Margin % and Labor Productivity. Begin today to focus on those two and the results will begin to show. 

Too Busy? The Antidote

"Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter."

- Essentialism, page 10

If you only read a book and watch one video this year I suggest this be the one. We are all way to "busy" and as my coach says, "Busyness is Laziness". In other words, we are busy because we are too lazy to say "NO" to the shallow work, the non-essential things that come up every day.

As you review this - think about this, "Saying no is uncomfortable for a few minutes but saying YES can be uncomfortable for days, weeks sometime years." 

Read below and then watch this great video:

Essentialism - 45 minute video Greg McKeown

Non- Essentialist	Essentialist
Thinks: All Things to all People  "I have to" "It's all important" "How can I fit it all in?"	Thinks: Less But Better  "I choose to" "Only a few things really matter" "What are the trade-offs?"
Does: The undisciplined pursuit of MORE  Reacts to what's most pressing Says yes to people without really thinking Tries to force execution at the last moment	Does: The disciplined pursuit of LESS  Pauses to discern what really matters Says "no" to everything except the essential Removes obstacles to make execution easy
Gets: Lives life that does not satisfy Takes on too much and work suffers Feels out of control Is unsure whether the right things get done Feels overwhelmed and exhausted	Gets: Lives life that really matters Chooses carefully in order to do great work Feels in control Gets the right things done Experiences joy in the journey

Essentialism - A summary written by: John Petrone

"Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter."
- Essentialism, page 10

In a hyper-connected world filled with endless opportunities to pursue, Greg McKeown's approach in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less provides a roadmap to help focus our energies on high-impact activities.

Following his essentialist dream, McKeown left law school to pursue a career of teaching and writing. He started his own leadership and strategy company, guiding individuals and companies to focus on the most critical priorities. The end result of his willingness to pursue his highest contribution is this book, which describes a blueprint for taking back control and directing our

Less But Better

"Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it's about how to get the right things done. It doesn't mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at your highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential."

- Essentialism, page 5

So what exactly is essentialism? The author defines it best as "a discipline you apply each and every time you are faced with a decision about whether to say yes or whether to politely decline. It's a method for making the tough trade-offs between lots of good things and a few really great things. It's about learning how to do less but better so you can achieve the highest possible return on every precious moment in your life."

How many of the tasks that get added to our to-do lists are absolutely vital? McKeown believes that by focusing on fewer pursuits, we can concentrate our energies on those with the biggest influence and increase our happiness and productivity. It's about continuously asking, "Am I investing in the right activities?"

The key idea is eliminating the non-essential to make time for what is important. Focusing on what's vital starts with choosing how to spend our time and energy.

Gem #1

Exercise the power of choice

"If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will."

- Essentialism, page 10

Our options are not always within our control but our ability to select among them is. Choosing how to spend our energy and time is difficult because it involves trade-offs and that means saying no to something. "The reality is, saying yes to any opportunity by definition requires saying no to several others. We can either make our choices deliberately or allow other people's agenda to control our lives."

So how do we go about having the courage to make better choices about what we do with our precious time and energy? Our first task should be to increase our level of comfort with saying no. It is not a rejection of the relationship, but merely a dismissal of the demand or request being asked of us. When we say no, we're saying no to the request and not the relationship.

He also advocates following the 90 per cent rule, which entails only saying yes to the top ten percent of opportunities. It involves identifying a set of critical criteria or attributes and assigning a score between 0 and 100. The only opportunities pursued would be those that score a 90 and above, disregarding everything else.

It is easier to say no when you know what you want. Scheduling time to figure out what we want is one of the key themes to leading an essentialist life.

Gem #2

Make time to escape and explore life

"The prevalence of noise: Almost everything is noise, and a very few things are exceptionally valuable. This is the justification for taking time to figure out what is most important. Because some things are so much more important, the effort in finding those things is worth it."

- Essentialism, page 20

Scheduling time to focus and reflect is hugely beneficial in figuring out what the best use of our resource should be. The purpose of choosing and making trade-offs is so we can focus and concentrate on our highest priorities. That is the ultimate aim of an essentialist.

McKeown believes in the importance of "deliberately setting aside distraction-free time in a distraction-free space to do absolutely nothing other than think. We need space to escape in order to discern the essential few from the trivial many." Only once we've cleared our mind of the clutter can we focus on what our biggest contribution will be.

What's important now? Can you confidently answer that question and feel like you're working on the most meaningful priority in your life? In order to make essential choices in our lives, we have to ask the right questions. We can only ask the right questions when we've taken the time to pause and reflect what we really want in our lives.

There is a mistaken belief that we can have it all and multi-task our way to efficiency and productivity. McKeown makes a clear distinction between multi-task and multi-focus. While we can text and eat, or check email and clear our desk, we cannot concentrate on two things at once; we can only focus on one thing at a time.

Master the power of choice and don't be afraid to make the tough decisions. Concentrate your energies on your high impact contributions. You just may find your path to an essentialist life. How will you take back control and direct your life to make the most meaningful impact?

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less - Book Review

by Noah Kagan

I've been reading more this year and so far my favorite has been Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. It's so good I bought it for the team at AppSumo so they could all read it.

I often talk about having one goal and prioritizing based that goal as a key to marketing. Essentialism is an in depth look at what happens when we put more energy into ONE thing instead of EVERYthing in life and work

 I HIGHLY encourage you to buy the book, regain your focus, and start accomplishing more.

Below are quotes I pulled from the book as I read:

His stress went up as the quality of his work went down. It was like he was majoring in minor activities.

Is THIS the very most important thing I should be doing with my time and resources right now?

Essentialism: only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.

Think: Less but better.

If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.

Priority. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities.

Think about what happens to your closet when you never organize it. Wear this someday in the future? Ask more disciplined, tough questions: "Do I love this?" and "Do I look great in it?" and "Do I wear this often?"

Will this activity or effort make the highest possible contribution toward my goal?"

As Peter Drucker said, "People are effective because they say 'no,' because they say, "this isn't for me."

As poet Mary Oliver wrote: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?"

Straddled strategy - Attempting to invest in everything at once.

A choice is an action

Once dogs didn't think they had a choice. Those dogs that had been powerless in the last part of the experiment did not. These dogs didn't adapt or adjust

The ratio of hours to pounds. What really counted was the relationship between time and results. Think about the output for the time you are inputting.

Warren Buffett - He owes 90% of his wealth to just ten investments.

We discover how even the many good opportunities we pursue are often far less valuable than the few truly great ones.

Straddling means keeping your existing strategy intact while simultaneously also trying to adopt the strategy of a competitor.

Jim Collins could either build a great company or build great ideas but not both. Jim chose ideas.

Instead of asking, "What do I have to give up?" they ask, "What do I want to go big on?

An essentialist explores and evaluates a broad set of options before committing to any. Because Essentialists will commit and "go big" on only the vital few ideas or activities, they explore more options at first to ensure they pick the right one later.

Creating space to explore, think, and reflect should be kept to a minimum. Yet these very activities are the antidote.

When did you last take time out of your busy day simply to sit and think?

Journalism is NOT just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the point.

In every set of facts, something essential is hidden.

Nothing fires up the brain like play.

Protecting the Asset = Sleep!

The best asset we have for making a contribution to the world is ourselves.

What happens to our closets when we use the broad criterion, "Is there a chance that I will wear this someday in the future?" The closet becomes cluttered with clothes we rarely wear. But if we ask, "Do I absolutely love this?

We tend to value things we already own more highly than they are worth, and thus find them more difficult to get rid of.

If I didn't already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?

The 90-10 model for making decisions. You can apply to just about every decision or dilemma. As you evaluate an option, think about the single most important criterion for that decision, and then simply give the option a score between 0 and 100. If you rate it any lower than 90 percent, then automatically change the rating to 0.

Vigilant about acknowledging the reality of trade-offs

[For hiring]

Whether the employee is organized enough to find a quiet place at an allotted time for phone interviews.

"Would he or she love working here?" and "Would we love having him or her work with us?" and "Will this person be an absolutely natural fit?"

What will I say no to?

Clarity about what is essential fuels us with the strength to say no to the nonessentials.

[Saying no to others]

Separate the decision from the relationship. Say no to non-essential meetings.

Initial annoyance or disappointment or anger wears off, the respect kicks in.

When we push back effectively, it shows people that our time is highly valuable. It distinguishes the professional from the amateur.

I say no very easily because I know what is important to me

If I weren't already invested in this project, how much would I invest in it now?"

Nobody in the history of the world has washed their rental car. Tendency to undervalue things that aren't ours.

By quietly eliminating or at least scaling back an activity for a few days or weeks you might be able to assess whether it is really making a difference.

The Latin root of the word decision-cis or cid-literally means "to cut" or "to kill. Imagine every cut produces joy.

Shift the ratio of activity to meaning.

Boundaries are a little like the walls of a sandcastle. The second we let one fall over, the rest of them come crashing down. Essentialists, on the other hand, see boundaries as empowering.

You need to put up your fences well in advance, clearly demarcating what's off limits so you can head off time wasters and boundary pushers at the pass

Another quick test for finding your deal breakers is to write down any time you feel violated or put upon by someone's request.

Essentialist, on the other hand, use the good times to create a buffer for the bad.

Needs to identify the "Herbie": the part of the process that is slower relative to every other part of the plant. What is getting in the way of achieving what is essential?

"What obstacles or bottlenecks are holding you back from achieving X, and how can I help remove these?"

When we want to create major change we often think we need to lead with something huge or grandiose. BUT, in all forms of human motivation the most effective one is progress. Creates momentum and affirms our faith in our further success

Visualize. Something powerful about visibly seeing progress toward a goal.

"The tape" was a visualization of the perfect race. In exquisite detail and slow motion Phelps would visualize every moment from his starting position on top of the blocks, through each stroke, until he emerged.

Whenever she schedules a meeting or phone call, she takes exactly fifteen seconds to type up the main objectives.

With repetition the routine is mastered and the activity becomes second nature.

You can easily do two things at the same time: wash the dishes and listen to the radio. What we can't do is concentrate on two things at the same time.

Pathetically tiny amount of time we have left of our lives. It challenges me to be even more unreasonably selective about how to use this precious.

Peter Thiel took "less but better" to an unorthodox level when he insisted that PayPal employees select one single priority in their role-and focus on that exclusively.