The Pareto Principle

We all have a to-do list, be it mental or in writing.  For many of us the list is quite extensive.  So how do you tackle your to-do list?  Do you start with the things that take the least time, the items that are most urgent, or the things that will bring the most impact?  No doubt you have heard of the Pareto Principle, more commonly called the 80/20 rule.  It goes something like this, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.  When applied to your to-do list, that means 20% of the items on your list, will produce 80% of your results.  That should make you look at your to-do list in a whole new light.  So instead of sorting your list by due-date, importance, or duration, sort it by the impact or results of completing that task.  Once you do that, the top 20% of that list you should own, it’s yours, focus on it.  The other 80% should be delegated, eliminated, or postponed. 

Fixed Pie Theory

The Fixed Pie Theory states ‘the more you have the less I have’ rips away at an organization’s capacity to succeed.  It truly is a self fulfilling prophecy and starts with the individual.  The person that believes the more recognition/money/responsibility someone else has the less they will have spends their mental energy on reducing the other person’s recognition/money/responsibility thus reducing both of their capacity to succeed.  The person who knows that the pie is endless, focuses on increasing theirs and others recognition/money/responsibility will naturally increases the pie for everyone.  How so you ask?  When you increase other’s recognition/money/responsibility it leads to greater teamwork, innovation, and productivity thus creating more demand and market growth which is good for everyone.  The bad news is that every organization has the fixed pie theorist.  The good news is that the endless pie believers will naturally cultivate an environment the fixed pie theorists will quickly run from.  Innovation breeds more innovation, recognition inspires recognition, responsibility creates responsibility, happiness is contagious, the list is endless.  Which theory do you KNOW is True?  Live Generously!

Listen If You Want To Be Heard

Communicating is less about you and more about them.  We worry about what we are going to say, what we are going to sound like, and how we are going to be perceived.  If you want to know what to say, sound good saying it, and know what you are talking about, you need to first listen.  Listen to what your audience is saying, this will tell you what’s important to them.  Once you think you know what is important to them, listen some more, our first assumptions are usually not correct.  Internalize what they are saying, try to put yourself in their shoes.  This is called active listening.  Warning, if you are trying to create your response while you are listening to the other person, you are not listening.

Only after you have practiced active listening are you allowed to speak.  You will choose better words, sound more confident, and come across and genuinely be more authentic to yourself and your audience.  We take speech classes in grade school and college, but when was the last listening class you took? Do not confuse listening with going with the crowd.  Really Listen, Listen again, Decide, and Move On.  

Motivating Generation X, Y and Z

The other day I was discussing with a friend about how athletics has changed over the years. “The days are gone where you can tell a player to run another lap without them ‘lawyer-ing up’ or dropping out to join another team.” she said.  This wasn’t the first time I had participated in such a discussion. 

Whatever the case may be for why we have arrived here, motivating the workforce has become increasingly more important to executing business objectives.  Here are a few management tactics that might be applied to these situations:

• Align Growth Plans - For a leader, it can sometimes be frustrating to think about the fact that at any moment their people may want to exit and join another team. An effective tactic is to open and maintain a regular dialogue to discuss the win / win of continuing to work together.
• Win / Win Results - Most people do not like to be told how to do things. A more effective method is to clearly define expectations around the desired results, then let the employee explore how to reach them.
• Time Management – Most employees today place a lot of value on their time away from work and want to use their work time to effectively achieve their objectives. According to a recent poll, the biggest “waste of time” in business is meetings. As a leader, setting and holding clear objectives for these discussions helps all involved retain value for the time spent. 

Contributed by Jane Henry.  Jane coaches managers in the corporate environment to forge strong partnerships and increase the value they contribute to the bottom line.  She can be contacted via email at Jane@Xcution.com

Why Top Executives Are Hiring Coaches

You are at the top of your game, your strengths and abilities got you to where you are, so why would you hire a coach?  Google CEO Eric Schmidt says it best that “every famous athlete, every famous performer has somebody who’s a coach.  Somebody to watch what they are doing… and can give them perspective.”  A coach is a partner who challenges your thinking to reach new levels of insight and helps provide focus to an ever changing world of business.

Successful executives are not immune to the everyday stresses, in fact the integration of work and personal life, a highly demanding and visible career, and your own expectations you put on yourself are just a few of the challenges that seem to pull you in every direction at once.  The powerful thing about having a great coach is the fact that no topic is off limits, personal or professional.  This allows you to find clarity by taking a holistic approach to becoming a more energized, focused, and successful leader and individual.

Even with a successful track record, executives cannot afford to not hire a coach to remain proactive in improving their own abilities, their team members’ abilities, and their organizational abilities which leads to greater success for all.  Whether it is to tackle an immediate urgent issue or to be retained for a longer term strategic improvement plan, a coach can be your most trusted personal advisor.

Linked below is a short video clip of Schmidt talking about some of the best advice he ever received which was to hire a coach.  He sums it up best by saying “the one thing that people are never good at is seeing themselves as other’s see them.  A Coach really really helps.“

Google CEO Video Clip

Are You a Leader or a Firefighter?

If the title of this blog caught your interest, chances are either you or someone you know share one or both of the experiences common to many leaders.

It is easy to get consumed by the work load.  After all, every one is depending on the leader to get the job done. Here are a couple symptoms of a leader getting caught in the “firefighter” syndrome:

• I’m always fighting fires! And there are so many of them across the horizon that real work never gets done.  You know, the strategic things, things that make a real difference, solve the real problem, work on success instead of preventing failure.
• I feel like I’m drinking from a fire hose! There is so much work to be done and so little time to do it.  Urgent tasks come in a steady, high-volume stream, and prevent any attempt at strategic activities or organization.

Being the hero who always saves the day and leaps over tall buildings in a single bound is very rewarding.  It’s a real adrenalin rush.  The question is, however, how sustainable is this?  What is the leader’s real job?

Here are some ways to break out of fire fighting.

• Depend on your team. Your role as a leader is to build a team that can do the job.  Build it.
• Delegate responsibility to the team.  Once you’ve built the team, give them the responsibility.  One of the best ways to inspire your team is to let them know you trust them to solve the crisis, make the decision, or get the job done.
• Hold the team accountable. Let there be no mistake.  You trust them with the responsibility – they must also be accountable for the results.

Don’t try to be a hero – instead create a heroic team!

Contributed by Bob McAuliffe.  Bob works with technology and business leaders to forge a strong partnership and increase the value they contribute to the bottom line.  He can be contacted via email at bob@xcution.com

The Five-and-a-half-inch Course Between Your Ears

“Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course – the space between your ears,” quipped Bobby Jones, the renowned golfer.

How true that is!  Golf is a game of extreme focus.   The most talented players know the biggest competitive advantage is the ability to focus and to control what’s going on in that five-and-a-half-inch course between your ears.

And, how true that is in business.  Success is a game that is played, like golf, on a five and a half inch course – the space between your ears.  It takes a lot of preparation, training, talent and technology – Mental preparation and focus is the true competitive advantage.

Here are some lessons I’ve taken from golf:

• Know yourself and your abilities.  Know what your strengths are and where you need to develop and improve.  Play within your ability, and always work on improving your ability.
• Continue to learn. Be open to new techniques, knowledge, and technology.  Watch other players and see what you can learn from them.
• Have a strategy and execute on it. Before your round, plan your game and have a strategy for how you play each hole.  Play that strategy, and adapt as necessary to changing conditions.
• Take the shot. Plan your shot, and then have confidence in it.  Take it.  Have confidence in your ability to adapt and recover if it doesn’t produce the planned result.
• Focus on the positive outcome. Envision the shot, and focus on hitting the target.  Don’t let obstacles or hazards attract your attention and focus.

How do these lessons apply in your business?

Contributed by Bob McAuliffe.  Bob works with technology and business leaders to forge a strong partnership and increase the value they contribute to the bottom line.  He can be contacted via email at bob@xcution.com

Make IT Happen!

Getting information technology right in a large corporation is a tough job.

It requires multi-disciplined, highly skilled teams.  Business requirements are in a constant state of flux – and so are the budgets.  Business leaders and technology leaders are challenged to ensure that they are delivering value to the bottom line and optimizing the return on their investments – in addition to understanding and navigating corporate politics and policies.

And many fall short of where they really want to be.

I am convinced that the real secret to success is a very simple recipe.  In the Trifecta, we talked about three key ingredients: strong leadership, effective stakeholder engagement and right-sized processes.  Nowhere is that more true than in the world of corporate information technology.

To “make IT happen” in a large corporation, senior business leaders and senior technology leaders need to be engaged together to:

• Develop a strong presence in implementing and optimizing technology investments
• Engage and motivate key stakeholders
• Create and inspire winning teams

To “make IT happen” in a large corporation, teams need to continually review and right-size their processes to:

• Build relationships and transparency between business organizations and their technology service providers
• Create focus on business requirements and return on investment
• Optimize and improve team work deliverables

The job is still tough – but these are a winning combination.

Contributed by Bob McAuliffe.  Bob works with technology and business leaders to forge a strong partnership and increase the value they contribute to the bottom line.  He can be contacted via email at bob@xcution.com

Marathon Weekend

This past January 9^th and 10^th, I took on both the half and full marathons at Walt Disney World thus being my very first Goofy Challenge (39.3 miles in two days).  I have run marathons before…back to back would be a first for me. 

The first day I had stepped awkward and started to feel a pain in the arch of my left foot.  After completing the first race (13.1 miles), I sat and iced my foot the remainder of the day to make sure I was back in shape for the full marathon the next morning.  Call it adrenalin or just sheer excitement to run again with one of my closest friends, I didn’t feel any pain when I woke.  Sunday morning around mile 3, I started to feel a searing pain up my foot, into the heel and around my ankle.  With 23.2 miles more to go, I couldn’t help myself from thinking about this big challenge ahead of me.    

Big challenges…you may have had a few – building a new book of business, building up a new team, raising a child, or running a marathon.  I’m talking about the ones that take longer than a few weeks to complete.  The real sticky ones that can bring you to question – “What the heck am I doing?”

A dear and insightful friend of mine reminded me the other day that a marathon is not 26 miles; it is 26 one mile runs.  More than ever before, this was indeed the case.  I had spent the past 6 months training and had already completed 16.1 miles.  My family (my dear husband and two children) supporting me with every step.  Could I really make it another 23.2 miles?  Was I about to give it all up? 

I finished 23 one mile runs that day.  With each accomplishment I celebrated making it that far and why I was running that distance in the first place…Connor…Run for Our Sons.

I invite you to take a moment today.  Just 30 minutes to sit back and reflect on one of the challenges you are currently facing.  You might ask yourself:

• What brought you to taking on this challenge in the first place?
• How far have you come already? 
• How many more one mile races do you have until you finish?
• How will you celebrate?

Here are a few marathon race pictures and videos I took on the way.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking them. 

Videos and Pictures

 

Yogi Berra and Fierce Conversations

Remember what Yogi Berra said about baseball? “Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.”

Success in business is like that.  Everything we’ve done to prepare for success is only half of what it takes.  The other ninety percent is how we connect with other people.

One of my favorite books is Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott.  Here are some tips that I took away from the book to help me form meaningful connections with other people.

• Discover the other person’s reality. Let your conversations be a journey where you discover the other person’s reality.  Be prepared to truly listen to what the other is saying, and see your conversations as an opportunity to learn instead of an opportunity to inform.
• Be the real you and be prepared to meet the real other.  Be authentic, and let the other person be authentic.  Understand and respect the other’s needs, agenda, and requirements.  As you listen, you will discover a wonderful opportunity to learn about the other.
• Show up for your conversations.  Live in the present moment, leave other concerns behind and fully engage.
• Use your intuition: It’s a wonderful gift.  Listen to it, and let it guide you.  Listen to your gut.  While it may not always be right, it’s telling you something.  Investigate it.
• Be aware of your emotional impact on others. If it isn’t an impact you feel comfortable with, re-evaluate your approach.
• Use Silence. It’s a good opportunity to collect thoughts, reflect and frame your next statement instead of doing it while the other person is talking.

In the Trifecta, we talked about the simple combination of Leadership, Stakeholder Engagement and Right-sized Processes.  Truly connecting in “fierce conversations” with other people prepares you for success in all three.

Contributed by Bob McAuliffe.  Bob works with technology and business leaders to forge a strong partnership and increase the value they contribute to the bottom line.  He can be contacted via email at bob@xcution.com