I have been thinking about personal development lately.  Specifically, I am interested in how Breakthrough with Tony Robbins ended up getting canceled after two episodes and about 3 million viewers for each and Jersey Shore continues with over 5 million viewers and increasing popularity. At first, I dismissed it as another stroke of incompetence from NBC (they haven’t had the greatest year) but, as I tossed the idea around in my head, decided it’s more than that.

I am an avowed supporter of Tony Robbins and his personal needs psychology-based approach to coaching.  I have used his products and coaches and have attended live events during the past 15 years.  His work inspires me and has challenged me to improve who I am becoming as a person, husband, father, friend and leader.

His program took on people facing life’s challenges including joblessness, grieving the loss of a loved one, sudden paralysis on a wedding day, and so on.  This was truly reality television and it was, at times, a bit hard to watch simply because the things he was asking people to do, apart from being physically and emotionally challenging and “impossible” at first glance, also hit too close to home to the viewers.

Human nature drives us to judge others by their behavior and ourselves by our intentions. We spend, collectively, a significant amount of our waking time in escapist programs like Jersey Shore, The Bachelor, Celebrity Rehab, and Jerry Springer. Why? Because the ridiculousness of the characters’ “lives” make us feel better about ourselves as we lower the bar for what good looks like.

On the other hand, Robbins has a paraplegic skydive, play murder ball on a basketball court and finish building and then driving an off-road truck through the desert.  Why? To show him what was still possible if he could break the limiting beliefs and patterns that were stopping him.

Some will say, “Sure. If I flew to see Tony Robbins in Fiji or LA or NYC and he gave me personal coaching and all of that expensive support, I could change as well.” These people are right in a way – he could help them help themselves. But, by turning themselves into victims of circumstance, they miss the key part that everyone – including the cast on Robbins’ show- still has to choose whether to change.  Robbins does not have the ability to change anyone. He has the ability to influence others to make that choice. It is up to them to act their way to a new way of thinking. The changing is in the doing, not the talking.

Robbins teaches a platform built upon personal responsibility and accountability. He asks people to step up and become whatever it is that they are working to become. He emphatically states that “if you can’t then you must.”  He knows that, in the doing, lives change.

On his site, should you choose to take some action to hold a mirror up to understand your work style and values, is a 15-minute, completely free exercise, built on the time-proven DISC assessment.  The report will be eye-opening for you and provide you with some specific insights and strategies for continuing to build on your strengths.

Enjoy and live with passion!

I have recently been thinking about how much time I waste everyday doing things that don’t serve me, don’t serve others, and don’t serve the greater good. I tweeted that every minute we spend being a victim is time lost on becoming a contribution.

This week, I got to the end of one day and wanted a cosmic do-over. I went for a long run and, as usual, felt better about things at the end of it. Why? I took the time to change what I was focused on first and also changed my physiology by how I was using my body to meet the demands of the run. I focused on my stride, my breathing, the humid air, the rising moon, the slight breeze in one direction and the lack of it in the other. I focused on the glowing building sign of a company I used to work for, the late-night worker walking somewhere, the cars going by, and the glow from the headquarters of the American Automobile Association. I focused on the symphony of sounds from crickets and frogs and slapping away a mosquito or two and thinking, briefly, about dengue fever.

During the run, my physiology changed. I was running upright with my new Newton trainers, changing my stride to be more efficient, adjusting stride length on the slight uphill portions of the route, sipping from my water bottle, taking deep breaths as I got tired while watching my heart rate drop 3 or 4 points. In short, I was tapping into all of the power that I had left to give that night to flush out the mental toxins of the day.

The run helped me shake the virtual etch-a-sketch and clear the slate for a better, more resourceful next day. And, as always, it worked.

Without running, it’s too easy for me to hold onto what I didn’t do right at a given moment.  Without running, I do not readily access the resources that I have within me. Without running, I am less than what I am capable of being as a leader. Without running, I am significantly less likely to be a contribution. Thank God for the gift of running.

What’s your running? What can you do to change what you focus on and your physiology to get you to a better state? Remember, we never lack for resources, just resourcefulness. So go for a walk, run, ride, or jump on a Wii Fit board for some yoga and stretching and, while you are moving your body, think about what you are grateful for in your life right now.

Change your focus and your physiology and you change the quality of your life.

A friend of mine has a son at a major university becoming a resident assistant this fall. It got me thinking about my own experiences as an RA at Florida and what they taught me about leadership.

The Good

1. The RA process is well-defined and there is precious little the resident director and tenured RA’s on the team have not experienced and dealt with over time. This is an amazing benefit to the new RA.
2. For many RA’s, this is the first experience in becoming part of a team and living in close proximity to your team provides a new and challenging dynamic.
3. The hall dynamics change everyday as 65 guys go through the ups and downs of life. That keeps things interesting and challenges the RA to problem-solve rapidly in high-stress situations.
4. My work as a server at a few full-service restaurants provided me with the experience to read people and situations rapidly, a skill that served me well during the year.
5. I was trained to deliver time management courses, my first introduction to public speaking. Terrifying and liberating.

The Bad

1. One of my guys left suddenly while I was in class and didn’t come back. Seems he was entrepreneurial and was making his way through school using a cannibis-based business model. Truly a waste of talent.
2. Alcohol changes people and a ground floor bathroom demolished at three a.m. was evidence of that. It also reduced my student count by two by the end of the next week.
3. I became an R.A. during my junior year when I was beginning the core of my accounting curriculum. I always spent a great deal of time studying and my lack of natural talent in accounting increased that time dramatically. The stress of the fall semester nearly sent me over the mental edge on multiple occasions. I have running to thank for keeping me (arguably) sane and effective during that time.

The Ugly (but not really)

1. An overzealous religious recruiter nearly ended the college career of one my freshmen. I got involved, spoke to the recruiter, and ended the harassment. The student was grateful and his mom made me a Garfield pillow. (Stop laughing, I like the cat!)
2. Exam weeks were a bit of a nightmare and my style under stress the night before my cost accounting final showed through in all its blazing glory. As several students celebrated the end of their exam in the lounge next to my room at 2 am by jumping on tables and screaming, I flew out my door in my underwear to yell to the assembled masses “QUIET NOW!!!!” It was effective in stopping the madness and became a source of great ribbing by the guys during the second semester of the year. Even at my wedding a few years later, several of the guys from my floor were teasing me about the “Quiet Now” moment.

The Bottom Line

The RA experience is a fantastic introduction to human psychology and proving to students that take the plunge what they are capable of accomplishing. It is a great leadership laboratory that helps form the student’s leadership style and I highly recommend it as a leadership development experience. To my friend’s son and all of the RA’s accepting this assignment – have the time of your life and savor every challenging and exhilarating moment.

Sitting on a recent flight, I overheard a passenger on his cell phone comment to a colleague about a customer, “Is anybody complaining?”  Of course, having been bludgeoned by Tom Peters Excellence for decades and because this space is about questions, I asked myself whether words mean something? Of course they do.  Language drives emotion and emotion drives actions.

There are better questions to ask including, “Do our customers think we hung the moon yet?” “What can we do for them that makes working with us a spiritual experience?”  “What completely unexpected thing can we do that would forever associate our name with Excellence in their minds?” “What can we do for the customer that makes them delighted?”*

Asking whether anyone is complaining is a sign that we have given up.  The facts suggest that most customers don’t complain. For every complaint, ten customers have voted with their feet and probably told two people the story about why they left. It suggests a passive approach to the problem – what we don’t know won’t hurt us. This is as foolish as it is commonplace.

Do we have the time to ask better questions? Of course we do. Just take the time saved by no longer talking about your competitors and wondering what they are doing. You no longer need to ask that question because, I promise, 99.95% of your competitors are not asking these high quality questions today. You ask a better question. You answer. You act. You win. Period. There can be no other outcome because the laws of cause and effect are supporting you every step of the way.

If your customers aren’t complaining, call them and find out why. If they have given up on you, they may tell you. If they haven’t, it is an opportunity to find out what else you can do to delight them. At a minimum, you will know more about the people that pay your salary at the end of the call and what you and your team can do to serve them at a new level.

The quality of the answer to anything is in direct proportion to the quality of the question. Choose well.

*Different kinds of delight

Restaurant delight: They know my name. They serve great coffee.

Zappos delight: They exist.

Apple delight: The order arrives one week before it’s promised. The packaging is as impressive as the product. Steve Jobs keynotes.

Marriott delight: 64 degrees. Flat pillows. Top floors. Fast internet.

Peet’s Coffee delight: Major Dickason’s beans roasted the day they are shipped. Opening the box.

Netflix delight: Thousands of on-demand programs for $14.95 a month.

Tour de France delight: No doping. Picturesque countryside shots. Col de Tourmelet.

Southwest delight: On-time performance. Empty overhead bins. Hilarious, personable flight attendants (“Pressing the flight attendant button does not turn on the flight attendant.”)

Kindle delight: Owning it.

iPad delight: Being allowed to use it.

AT&T delight: Sorry, I’ve got nothing.

USA delight: Freedom, liberty, capitalism

Congressional delight: 100% turnover

Critical thinking delight: Hearing some

Magical thinking delight: Not hearing some

I spend a great deal of time thinking about process improvements. How to make the things we do repeatable and sustainable. How to help the team focus on serving the customer rather than on figuring out how to do the same job a different way each time we do it.

Two stories come to mind.

The first involved a large business transformation and a diagnostic phase where we were figuring out the “as is” process and the silly things we kept doing to make it hard for the customer to do business with us.  Thirteen or more potential touch points throughout the business for a customer to call, few of which had the customer’s information in front of them. China coffee cups served with blocks of sugar in the sales area and styrofoam cups in the corner after taking delivery. During a particularly frustrating walk-through, one of my team members said, “You know, what’s fascinating to me is not that we shoot ourselves in the foot, it’s how quickly we reload.”

The distinction I have made over time is that adult learning is challenging in and of itself and extending that to teams of adults and achieving organizational learning, even more so. Creating an environment where it is safe to make mistakes – and then learn from them – is how companies get better. Another required condition is the ability for team members, and especially leaders, to have adult conversations in which they can, respectfully, agree to disagree without the world falling down around them in a cataclysmic bang to their egos.

The second story relates to a boat-building operation in which the team was setting up the first mass production assembly line for Sea-Doo Jet Boats. One of the challenges of boat building is the gel coat process.  Fiberglass boats are crafted in molds and the painted exterior of the boat is done first. The operator has a gel coat gun and sprays the mold with multiple passes, avoiding streaks, not too thick and not too thin. It is a true art and, once done and covered with fiberglass and resin to cure, cannot be fixed. So, quality is key and scrap is expensive. After several week of struggling to perfect the process through changing materials, changing guns, and training operators, all the usual stuff, the head of plant engineering came up with, in my opinion, a most unusual and brilliant idea: Let’s do eye exams for the company.  It turned out that over 75% of the employees needed glasses. The company subsidized the prescriptions and within a few weeks, quality had improved by over 50%.

I’d love to tell you that, given enough time, I would have been able to divine that elegant solution, but that is wishful thinking. This guy looked at the problem through a different lens (sorry) and came up with a solution that cost less to fix plant-wide than the scrap cost of a few hulls. Simple and brilliant.

The key point is that great ideas can come from anywhere and are created most often by people that are comfortable to take a path less traveled and look at problems from unique perspectives.

Too many of us wait for our bosses to give us the answers, even after we realize the wait will be long, sometimes infinitely so. The people closest to the customer are in the best position to create change because they best understand why the customer is delighted and why the customer is not. Listen to these people. Provide them the resources they need to fix the problems. Remove barriers to getting the best job done.

Do it now.

“The solution to many of the world’s problems is to turn around and take a forward step. You can’t just keep trying to make a flawed system work.” Yvon Chouinard from 180 Degrees South

I often wonder what self-actualized looks like in a person. Watching Yvon Chouinard in a documentary about climbing mountains in Patagonia helped me understand it more clearly. This is a guy who has lived life, literally, on the edge; is clearly comfortable in his own skin; and who has spent a great deal of time reflecting and examining his own life to create an existence rich with meaning, accomplishment and contributions.

The quote that began this post was profound for me in many ways. How many times have I assumed that forward steps, once begun, can only exist when moving in the direction I originally established to reach a goal? The corollary is Einstein’s quote about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. As Chouinard tells it, if one is standing at the edge of a cliff, not turning around before taking a step forward is folly. Turn around and keep moving, change your approach, adjust your course, live to fight another day. These are self-evident to many people, but this quote, as happens with profound knowledge, hit me between the eyes and helped me make the distinction.

It’s interesting how much easier it is to coach others to change course and try new things than it is yourself. It’s easy to be caught up in a flawed system and believe that by pushing harder, it will right things. Sometimes pushing harder tightens the spiral rather than relieves it.

So I am going to spend time this week changing direction rather than walking off cliffs. The falling isn’t bad, but the landings are hell.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a…

As we serve our customers, our team members and ourselves, the determination of whether we succeed often comes down to what Tom Peters describes as “managing to moments of truth.”

In most decisions, alternatives exist to create memorable experiences.  In customer service, does the customer reach an automated recording first or a live, passionate customer loyalty rep that solves the problem on the first call?  In solving a complex technical problem, do we put a technician on a plane to go to the customer site and help solve the problem or start a week of arguments over the phone and e-mail about who is at fault?  When an employee walks in our office with a problem, do we solve it for them or ask questions and provide guidance to allow them the experience of reaching a successful conclusion?

On a recent Delta flight, the attendant stared down a passenger with clear contempt who simply didn’t understand the bag-under-the-seat-rule.  After several uncomfortable moments, the attendant leaned over the first two passengers and pushed the bag under the seat for the window passenger while glaring wordlessly at her.  Awkward moment of truth for that passenger and even more so for the five rows around her that witnessed it.  Suffice to say we steered clear of the attendant during the balance of the flight.

On my last Southwest flight, the attendant went through the safety instructions in this fashion: On oxygen masks: “If you are traveling with children (whispers) I’m sorry.”  “If you have to smoke, please step onto the wing.  This will be accompanied by the music “Bye Bye Birdie” and “Gone with the Wind.”  “This is a no complaining, no whining, no crying flight.  Please let your husbands know.”  “There may be 50 ways to leave your lover but there are only six exits to leave this plane.”  The safety announcement was met by loud cheers and clapping.  Later on, she noted that we were flying on a brightly painted, brand new Boeing 737-700 and that “we are very proud of it.”  More clapping.  On the way off the plane, many thanks to the attendants for their multiple moments of truth and vibrant reminder of why we fly the Southwest brand that consistently ranks ahead of other US domestic airlines in customer satisfaction and, not coincidentally, profitability.

I just finished reading Tony Hsieh’s book, “Delivering Happiness” and must say that the Zappos mission to deliver the best customer service in the world is not only compelling, it is authentic, heartfelt, hard-won, and it’s working!  Zappos is a frequent visitor to our home for many reasons, not the least of which are the outstanding customer loyalty reps on the phone, the free overnight delivery service and the free returns.  Seeing a Zappos box at the front door makes me smile.  And they grew the company from nothing to $1 billion in revenue in ten years!  The company has been built on core values that are not only espoused but in use everyday.  Even better, the mantra of making things better by 1% each day, as their COO/CFO points out, compounds to making that thing better by 37 times over the course of a year.

Delivering service and products better by 1% a day equals WOW service and spectacular brand loyalty.  From moments of truth that aren’t scripted for the employees but created by them in a culture that values diversity of thought, rewards innovation from every chair and expects WOW from every action.

Magical moments of truth are only possible if we provide the environment that supports our people making decisions, on the spot, that reflect how we value our customers.  MMOT require us to have a relationship with our customers and understand and anticipate their needs.  MMOT require us to define the work we are doing as a responsibility rather than as a job.  MMOT thrive when we provide our people with the degrees of freedom necessary to deliver WOW to our customers.  They can be created when we remember that customers pay all of our salaries.

And delivering our best at these moments of truth defines who we become as people, leaders and organizations.  And achieving this kind of Excellence seems exactly the point.

On the road to excellence, it is imperative that we take some time to consider what makes our work a responsibility rather than a job.  Some distinctions come to mind.  First, our responsibilities have the power of purpose behind them and jobs may not.  Responsibilities are important to someone else as well as us, often a customer (the one that pays our salaries).  Responsibilities often require us to communicate and collaborate to reach a successful outcome.  Perhaps more than anything, responsibilities have a high GAD index, and that makes all of the difference.

A Give A Damn index attempts to measure how much you/we care about the task at hand.  For a job, the index may be quite low.  We show up for work (perhaps on time), do the minimum required (or less if no one’s watching), take longer breaks and leisurely lunches and check Yahoo Sports for World Cup scores for the balance of the afternoon.  From the perspective of our customers, employer and other team members, our GAD index is low.

On the other hand, the GAD index for a responsibility is much higher.  The day may look more like this: We show up for work a few hours before everyone else to enjoy the solitude, plan our day and get some of the tougher please-don’t-disturb-me-or-I’ll-have-to-start-over issues handled before the rest of the team arrives.  We take our breaks walking between meetings and grab some bottled water on the way.  Someone brings our lunch or, if we head out, we take 30 minutes rather than an hour.  We don’t watch the clock but instead mark our progress by pages completed, samples derived, throughput shipped, speeches delivered and, in the process, lose track of the day, looking up to see the parking lot in its emptied glory.  Our customers check in with us at 6 am and 6 pm and we answer their calls and provide them support.  We think about how we can ship better tomorrow than today.  We have images of what 1% improvement looks like the next time out.  We send a message to the team to schedule an after-action review and don’t accept platitudes of “We’ll try harder next time,” but put together a plan to make that repeatable instead.  From the perspective of our customers, employer and other team members, our GAD index is undeniably high.

Responsibilities require us to give a damn.  They may be slowed by bureaucracy, incompetence, sloth-like behavior, poor attitudes, blank stares, awkward communication or lack of collaboration or inattention to details, but in the end, we work to deliver on a responsibility no matter what confronts us.  We do it because it is our purpose.  We do it because our team is relying on us.  We do it because a customer needs our help.  We do it because we look at our work as a responsibility, not a job.  We do it because we give a damn.

When you go to work tomorrow, are you going to your job or to your responsibility?  As with everything, it is a choice we each must make.

Center seats on airlines are rarely considered fun. Last night was an exception.

My aisle-seat mate was Davey Johnson, manager of the 1986 World Series champion New York Mets and long-time Baltimore Oriole and Atlanta Brave.  Davey was heading home from the Caribbean and was in the mood to talk. A lot.

In between busting chops, I asked Davey what excellent leadership looks like in baseball.  His answers were familiar.  “You have to care about your people first. Second, people have to know what their role is.  Finally, you allow the talent to rise to the top.” “Each guy knows who the best position player is, who is second and so on.” “You let the best guy play and, if he messes up, the next guy gets a chance to show what he can do.”

Davey Johnson was fired four times in his major league career. Why, I wondered.  He has a bachelor’s in mathematics, was one of the first ball players to use punch cards, Fortran and COBOL in order to analyze statistics.  He clearly cared about his players.  It is likely he didn’t suffer fools gladly and probable that some major league baseball owners are fools.  Perhaps Davey intersected a few times with such people.

My observations are that this guy was and is comfortable in his own skin.  Beyond anything else he is blunt, speaks his mind and the truth and doesn’t particularly worry about people being offended by it.  He invested his money and made a fortune outside of baseball and, based upon a few stories I won’t relate here, is clearly a man of integrity.

It is not hard to see why he was successful.  He marched to the tune of his own drummer which got him two World Series championships as a player and one as a manager. It also got him fired four times.  He lived and thrived on the edge, taking chances that most of us may dream of taking but don’t.

I’m glad I changed my flight last night. I’m glad Davey came back four days early from his vacation. I am more aware today than I was yesterday and I owe that to a leader that believes in excellence. And in people.

A team member from the past once remarked that it is not interesting that we shoot ourselves in the foot. What’s amazing is how quickly we reload. He had a point and one I’ve watched repeatedly in the ensuing years in my own behavior and that of others.

Why do otherwise intelligent and rational humans behave in this way? Consistently and repeatedly doing things that can be classified as mistakes rather than changing course and approaching and solving the offending behavior for the last time?

I am certainly no psychologist but did stay at a Holiday Inn Express (once), so will provide some thoughts.

In no particular order: change is hard, behavior has great inertia within, running the old patterns is comfortable, our egos want to maintain control, we don’t know how to do it differently (the curse of ignorance), we have masochistic personalities, we want to be right, we want to look good and save face, the risks of changing and doing it “right” are too great, we are comfortable with the outcomes now, we are not uncomfortable enough with the current outcomes to change now.

With this laundry list of reasons, it’s no wonder we tend to reload rather than adjust our behavior. And yet, for some things, we do change and stop repeatedly making the mistake. How?

We get a big enough “Why?” in front of us that makes it too painful to continue the present path. We change whatever we need to create a new order of things. In organizations, we bring in facilitators, trainers, hire new people, move people to new positions, move people out of the organization, rewrite position descriptions, conduct team building sessions, break bread together, read leadership books, study blogs, start earlier, leave later, set goals, implement key performance indicators, institute weekly reporting, increase update meeting frequency, create teams, conduct Crucial Conversations training, establish targets.

Essentially we do whatever it takes to alter the course of the business and break out of the rut. Because staying in the rut is worse than having to change. Staying in the rut means organizational decline, failure, disappointment and that fate is worse than rewiring our brains to try something different.

In short, the memory must fail a bit for us to change. We must let loose of the comforts of our habits in order to change them. We must see a city on the hill that must be visited no matter what and conclude that we cannot reach that destination doing things the way we do them today.

Change may be difficult but it is not impossible. We simply need a big enough “Why,” a brief failure of memory and the persistence and determination to get to that next destination.