Effective Communication

Let Your Work Do the Bragging for You?

March 26, 2020 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

From American clergyman Madison C. Peters‘s Wit and Wisdom of the Talmud (1900):

All the other rivers said to the Euphrates: “Why is the current of thy water not heard at a distance?”

The Euphrates replied: “My deeds testify for me. Anything sown by men at my shores will be in full bloom within thirty days.”

The rivers then addressed the Tigris: “Why is the current of thy waters heard at a distance?”

“I must direct the attention of the people to me by my tumultuous rapidity,” the Tigris replied.

The moral: The less the merits of a person are, the more he will feel urged to proclaim them to the public.

If you know that you’re great, you shouldn’t feel a strong need to tell anyone about it. “It is always the secure who are humble,” noted the English writer, philosopher G. K. Chesterton in his insightful essay “In Defense of Humility,” included in The Defendant (1901.)

Your Good Work Should Speak for Itself, But …

Reminding that there is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself, the Canadian entrepreneur Matshona Dhliwayo has said,

Let your work speak for itself:
If poor, it will remain silent.
If average, it will whisper.
If good, it will talk.
If great, it will shout.
If genius, it will sing.

Your feelings of self-esteem and self-confidence hinge on being able to take pride in your achievements. However, be mindful of the thin line between confidence and conceit—confidence is believing in yourself, but conceit is bragging about yourself.

Unfortunately, in the current world of work, it pays to promote yourself—you must speak up about your accomplishments because no one else is going to do it for you.

Let Your Work Do the Bragging for You? Use your work to lead others to view you favorably—but beware, nobody likes blatant braggarts. If other people sense that you’re trying too hard to blow your own horn, they’ll be turned off, and you’ll achieve the opposite of your intended effect on them. This is especially true if the attributes you’re trying to flaunt aren’t the ones that interest the others.

With competition more intense than ever before, what really matters is “who knows you” and “what they know about you” than about “whom you know.”

Do more than is asked. Deliver more than is expected. Show up where the action is. And make a show of your work.

As the boxing legend Muhammad Ali once declared, “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.”

This is Not Responsible Leadership: Boeing’s CEO Blames Predecessor

March 12, 2020 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

David Calhoun, Boeing CEO In January, Boeing’s former Chairman, David Calhoun, became CEO after the board fired Dennis Muilenburg. Less than two months later, in a New York Times interview last week, Calhoun blamed Muilenburg for the misfortunes plaguing Boeing:

Asked why he wouldn’t give up his salary (he gets a $7 million bonus if he can get the 737 MAX back into the sky) in light of the 737 MAX-related woes, Calhoun declared, “… ’cause I’m not sure I would have done it [taken the job without a salary].”
On Boeing’s systemic culture problem (a steady trickle of revelations has exposed software problems and corners being cut in the engineering and certification processes,) Calhoun characterized the contents of the leaked emails as unacceptable but also downplayed the issue: “… I see a couple of people who wrote horrible emails.”
Calhoun has been on Boeing’s board since 2009. While the MAX crisis snowballed and Boeing’s crisis management went from bad to worse, Calhoun took over as the board’s chairman. In that capacity, he fully endorsed Muilenburg saying, “from the vantage point of our board, he has done everything right,” “he didn’t create this problem,” and “shouldn’t resign.” Now, in the last week’s interview, Calhoun had a different take: “Boards are invested in their CEOs until they’re not. We had a backup plan. I am the backup plan.”
Acknowledging that Muilenburg boosted production rates before the supply chain was ready, Calhoun declared, “I’ll never be able to judge what motivated Dennis, whether it was a stock price that was going to continue to go up and up, or whether it was just beating the other guy to the next rate increase. If anybody ran over the rainbow for the pot of gold on stock, it would have been him.”

Calhoun and the rest of Boeing’s board of directors were part of the context right from the outset. The roots of Boeing’s current crisis embody decisions made by the company’s leadership over a decade and fully sanctioned by the board. The board is wholly accountable for everything that happens under its authority.

Idea for Impact: Blame is an Accountability Killer

This is not responsible leadership. A true leader doesn’t pass the blame for failure but graciously accepts responsibility for the problems he inherited. Even though Boeing’s lapses may not be traceable directly to him in his capacity as a member of the company’s board, Calhoun should have acknowledged his—and the rest of the board’s—failing to keep an eye on Boeing’s leadership team over the last decade.

Leading with integrity means taking personal responsibility. It’s tempting for people to take flight and avoid the personal consequences of what happened, to reject personal responsibility, and to pass the blame on to other people.

Calhoun could have acknowledged that the board’s actions had a role in the situation. By facing up to these criticisms and admitting that Boeing and it’s board could have done things better, Calhoun could have encouraged others at Boeing to do the same, especially considering that he must overhaul the company culture from the top down.

Let’s Not Talk About Trump

March 9, 2020 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you feel like you’ve been overdosing on news and conversations related to politics and Trump, much to the exclusion of other meaningful subjects, try the “No Trump Rule” evoked by essayist Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal:

Every Friday I meet for lunch with three or four friends from high school days. I instituted at these lunches what I called the No Trump Rule: ‘No’ not in the sense of being against Trump’s politics but against talking about him at all, for doing so seems to get everyone worked up unduly. The rule, I have to report, has been broken more than the Ten Commandments. No one, apparently, can stop talking about our president. The Trump talk quickly uses up most of the oxygen in any room where it arises, and can bring an argument to the shouting stage more quickly than a divorce settlement.

Look, I understand that everybody has been amped up to eleven since Trump emerged as the Republican Party’s nominee in May 2016, but some of us don’t want to talk about him—or politics.

I, for one, don’t think it’s a good idea for so much of our news, talk shows, and social media feeds to be devoted to a single subject for this long. Yes, Trump is a polarizing figure, and our country is so divided. But we don’t need to let him, and the anger he provokes, besiege every moment of our lives.

Awareness and activism are vital to civic duty, but hatred isn’t meaningful activism

I’m happy to listen to everybody’s opinions, but I’m fatigued by the extent to which politics dominates present-day exchanges. Ordinary conversations about routine topics tend to degenerate quickly with any evocation of the current state of affairs. Even banter about the weather (“the last refuge of the unimaginative” per Oscar Wilde) can quickly spiral into climate change, the environment, fossil fuels, oil, Russia, Putin, and so on.

More than anything else, I can’t bear the way most people currently think about politics—in particular, how ill-informed they tend to be. I am dismayed at people’s shallow understanding of the significant issues of the day—immigration, trade, nationalism, economic inequality, healthcare, etc. The stakes are high, and, given the depth of people’s political convictions, their anger is understandable. Nevertheless, the propensity to lash out against those with different views and dehumanize them is deplorable.

I will talk about politics with people who aren’t as much interested in winning an argument and convincing opposing people of the wrongness of their positions as they are about understanding more fully why others hold a particular conviction.

Our values, not politicians, should mold the policies and positions we support

Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers’ commendable I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations (2019) proposes a framework for having productive political discussions with those you love and yet disagree with.

Somewhere along the way we stopped disagreeing with each other and started hating each other. We are enemies, and our side is engaged in an existential battle for the very soul of the country. We are no longer working toward common goals. We are no longer building something together. Our sole objective is tearing the other side down. Nothing short of total victory is acceptable.

…

The reality is that we never stopped talking politics altogether—we stopped talking politics with people who disagree with us. We changed “you shouldn’t talk about politics” to “you should talk only to people who reinforce your worldview.” Instead of giving ourselves the opportunity to be molded and informed and tested by others’ opinions, we allowed our opinions and our hearts to harden.

The authors, hosts of a popular discussion-podcast, invite readers “to hear each other’s thoughts, to test our own beliefs against each other’s philosophies, and to better appreciate our own core beliefs by having to articulate and challenge those beliefs.” They emphasize an earnest curiosity for the counterargument and the open-mindedness to leave room for nuance:

Engaging with other people is never easy, but it always will be worth it. Engaging with other people about politics is no different. Let yourself take that chance. Let yourself rise to the challenge. Your ability to stretch and grow will surprise you, and so will the people around you. Once people see you as a person willing to have thoughtful, curious, calm discussions, you will have all kinds of interesting conversations that seemed impossible a year ago.

Postscript: Things are far more awkward in the workplace. Politics has always been a sensitive topic—but in today’s contentious climate, such conversations can rapidly escalate into arguments.

What Happens When You Talk About Too Many Goals

February 28, 2020 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Matthew Pritchett's cartoon: Labour For the Many Brexit Positions Not the Few

To supplement this illustrious sketch by the British cartoonist Matt Pritchett, an excerpt from HuffPost’s article on “How Jeremy Corbyn Lost The Election,”

One big problem was the sheer size of the [Labour Party] manifesto and the number of policies on offer. Candidates complained that they didn’t have a single five-point pledge card like the one Tony Blair made famous. While the Tories had a simple message of ‘Get Brexit Done,’ Labour lacked a similarly easy ‘doorstep offer.’ “We had so much in the manifesto we almost had too much,” one senior source said. “It felt like none of it was cutting through. You needed to boil it down.”

“We tried to give a retail offer and also a grand vision and ended up falling between the two stools. To get across ‘you’ll be better off with Labour,’ we should have made our position clearer much earlier.”

Idea for Impact: Distill your goals into simple messages that others will find relevant and timely. When it comes to persuasion, clarity and conciseness are critical. Weak messages meander. Smart messages immediately express what’s important and help rally your resources towards your mission.

Never Give a Boring Presentation Again

February 13, 2020 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

When speaking to an audience, clarity and conciseness are critical.

Even the most exciting content can become meaningless if your audience can’t absorb your message.

When preparing a speech, begin at the end

Never Give a Boring Presentation Again: Focus on Three Core Messages Ask yourself, “If my audience can remember only three points from my presentation, what do I want them to remember?” Distill your message into three six-word bumper stickers. Frame your presentation around those three core messages.

If you’re addressing an audience that you aren’t familiar with, ask the organizers for the names of a half dozen people who will be in the audience. Contact them and find out about their backgrounds and their expectations for your presentation.

Don’t assume that ‘easy to understand’ could be interpreted as ‘too simple.’

Engage your audience effectively by quickly introducing your messages, perhaps with an interesting story or anecdote. Explain why you care your messages so deeply, and convince your audience members that they should, too.

Being short and snappy also helps you finish promptly and show respect for your audience’s schedules.

Idea for Impact: Don’t try to cover too much ground

A great speaker is made not by what they say but by what they choose not to say. Be clear on the purpose of your presentation and let that govern what content you include or exclude.

How to Stop “Standing” Meetings from Clogging Up Your Time

December 19, 2019 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Monthly staff conferences, progress updates, weekly sales calls, and other regularly scheduled “standing” meetings, essential though they may be, tend to be wasteful, especially so when they’re convened per tradition and attended out of an obligation.

How to Stop 'Standing' Meetings from Clogging Up Your Time The beginning of the year is a great time to examine all the standing meetings that you’re invited to. Review your calendar and consider the RoI of each standing meeting. Make each one of those meetings defend the use of your time—and your employees’ time.

Ask how else you could accomplish the goals of each meeting efficiently. If you must hold a meeting, remind all its participants of the reasons for gathering, and check if the meeting—and the frequency—still serves that purpose. Rewrite the charter of these meetings if necessary. Look at ways to complete the meetings more efficiently—perhaps in half the time, half as frequently, or with half the people.

For instance, a design team may convene for twice-a-week status reports at the project launch while there may be many decisions to make. Once the early frenzy subsides, only a monthly meeting may be justified, complemented by frequent status updates shared via email.

Idea for Impact: Don’t keep going to every meeting just because you’re invited, or because you think you have to.

Two Leadership Lessons from Oscar Munoz, United Airlines CEO

December 12, 2019 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

United Airlines announced last week that CEO Oscar Munoz and President Scott Kirby would transition to new roles as executive chairman and CEO respectively in May 2020.

Two Leadership Lessons from United Airlines' CEO, Oscar Munoz Munoz was very good for the airline. He deserves kudos for getting United back on track, for improving the company’s culture, employee morale, brand image, and customer experience, and for hiring Kirby.

Munoz, who came to United from the railroad company CSX, had hitherto gained considerable experience while serving for 15 years on United’s (and its predecessor Continental’s) board. But, when he became CEO in 2015, he stated that he hadn’t realized how bad things had got at United. That admission reflects poorly on his board tenure—board members are expected to be clued-up about the day-to-day specifics of the company and have more visibility into the pulse of the company’s culture beyond its senior management. Alas, board members not only owe their cushy jobs to the CEOs and the top leadership but also build long, cozy relationships with them.
Munoz will be remembered chiefly for the David Dao incident and the ensuing customer service debacle. The video of Dao being dragged out of his seat screaming was seen around the world. While the dragging was not Munoz’s fault (the underlying problem wasn’t unique to United,) the company’s horrendous response to the incident was. However, Munoz is worthy of praise for using the event as a learning exercise and an impetus for wholesale change in United’s operations and employee culture. In the aftermath of the incident, many customers vowed to boycott United flights, but that sentiment passed as the backlash over the incident waned. Even so, the David Dao incident need not have happened for United’s operational and cultural changes to materialize.

Scott Kirby is a hardnosed, “Wall Street-first, customer loyalty-last” kinda leader. Even though Kirby has made United an operationally reliable airline, his manic focus on cost-cutting has made him less popular with United’s staff and its frequent fliers. Let’s hope he’ll keep the momentum and preserve the good that Munoz has wrought.

How to Get Your Budget Through

December 3, 2019 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Be familiar with your company’s procedures and criteria for approving and managing capital expenditures. Your management will require a compelling return-on-investment (ROI) study (net present value, payback, breakeven, or internal rate of return estimates) vis-à-vis explicit or implicit hurdle rates.
Establish clear links between your budget and corporate strategy. If your management can see the real benefits to the business, they’ll find the costs easier to absorb. Amazon’s customer-oriented culture requires every proposal for a new feature, product, or service to be pitched by means of a “Mock Press Release” arguing how a hypothetical Amazon customer would first learn about the feature and its utility.
Don’t just roll your budget over from the previous year adding a certain percentage “and then some.” Many companies have adapted a cost-management tool called “Zero-Base Budgeting” that requires you to justify each line item in your budget as if it were an entirely new claim for an entirely new project.
State your assumptions explicitly. Prepare worst-case and best-case scenarios to augment realistic forecasting of the future and help prudent decision-making. Keep your budgets ambitious but realistic.
Allow room for contingencies. Avoid rigidities that could inhibit the quick and effective response to an unexpected event. Bring your contingency planning into the open for a careful review.
Add some fat, but not too much. Keep this in your back pocket, but be ready to make some cuts by knowing what their impact can be. Be clear and confident when questioned about any of the numbers in your budget.
Explain how true you were to the previous year’s budget. Make a distinction between controllable and uncontrollable budget variances. This will build your management’s confidence in your pitch for the year ahead.
Put your budget proposal to test with your team and supportive peers. Encourage them to ask all the difficult questions they can imagine. They may not only know where the skeletons are hidden and help you with the answers you’ll need, but also become indispensable allies in getting your budget approved.
To persuade each member of management, know what matters to him/her and link your budget to his/her objectives. Discuss your budget with the key decision-makers separately before a group discussion. (Management consulting firm McKinsey calls this technique “pre-wiring.”) By getting each participant’s buy-in, you can count on his/her support and avoid surprise reactions and disagreements.

A Great Email Time-Saver

November 29, 2019 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

When you’re trying to schedule a meeting with someone, make it easier for them to respond by proposing one or two choices in your initial email: “How about 9:00 AM on Tuesday?” or “Are you available on Tuesday at 10:00 AM or on Wednesday at 3:00 PM?”

Don’t give them many options (“any time next week”) or, worse yet, don’t ask them to leaf through their calendar and suggest a time (“I know you’re busy. Let me know when you want to meet.”)

Keeping it brief and specific maximizes the chance that one of your suggested times will work out, and they’ll quickly say “yes” without further iteration.

Lessons from the Collision on Tenerife, the World’s Worst Aviation Disaster [Book Summary]

November 5, 2019 by Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Jon Ziomek’s nonfiction history book Collision on Tenerife (2018) is the result of years of analysis into the world’s worst aviation disaster on Tenerife Island in the Canary Islands of Spain.

Distinct Small Errors Can Become Linked and Amplified into a Big Tragedy

On 27-March-1977, two fully loaded Boeing 747 passenger jets operated by Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines collided on the runway, killing 583 passengers and crew on the two airplanes. Only 61 survived—all from the Pan Am jet, including its pilot.

These two flights, and a few others, were diverted to Tenerife after a bomb went off at the Gran Canaria Airport in Las Palmas, their original destination. Tenerife was not a major airport—it had a single runway, and taxi and parking space were limited. After the Las Palmas airport reopened, flights were cleared for takeoff from Tenerife, but the fog rolled in over Tenerife reducing visibility to less than 300 feet. Several airplanes that had been diverted to Tenerife had blocked the taxiway and the parking ramp. Therefore, the KLM and Pan Am jets taxied down the single runway in preparation for takeoff, the Pan Am behind the KLM.

Tenerife airport disaster: Pan Am and KLM Aircraft

At one end of the runway, the KLM jet turned 180 degrees into position for takeoff. In the meantime, the Pan Am jet was still taxiing on the runway, having missed its taxiway turnoff in the fog. The KLM pilot jumped the gun and started his take-off roll before he got clearance from traffic control.

When the pilots of the two jets caught sight of each other’s airplanes through the fog, it was too late for the Pan Am jet to clear out of the runway into the grass and for KLM jet to abort the takeoff. The KLM pilot lifted his airplane off the runway prematurely, but could not avoid barreling into the Pan Am’s fuselage at 240 kmph. Both the jets exploded into flames.

The accident was blamed on miscommunication—breakdown of coordinated action, vague language from the control tower, the KLM pilot’s impatience to takeoff without clearance, and the distorted cross-talk of the KLM and Pan Am pilots and the controllers on a common radio channel.

Breakdown of Coordination Under Stress

Sweeping changes were made to international airline regulations following the accident: cockpit procedures were changed, standard phrases were introduced, and English was emphasized as a common working language.

In Collision on Tenerife, Jon Ziomek, a journalism professor at Northwestern University, gives a well-written, detailed account of all the mistakes leading up to the crash and its aftermath.

The surviving passengers’ first- and second-hand accounts recall the horror of those passengers on the right side of the Pan Am jet who saw the lights of the speeding KLM 747, just as the Pan Am pilot was hastily turning his airplane onto the grass to avoid the collision.

Ziomek describes how passengers escaped. Some had to make the difficult choice of leaving loved ones or friends and strangers behind.

Dorothy Kelly … then spotted Captain Grubbs lying near the fuselage. Badly burned and shaken by his jump from the plane, he could not move. “What have I done to these people?” he yelled, pounding the ground in anguish. Kelly grabbed him under his shoulders and urged “Crawl, Captain, crawl!”

Recommendation: Read Jon Ziomek’s Collision on Tenerife

Some of the bewildering details make for difficult reading—especially the psychological effects (post-traumatic stress syndrome) on the surviving passengers. But Jon Ziomek’s Collision on Tenerife is important reading, providing a comprehensive picture of the extensive coordination required in aviation, the importance of safety and protocols, and how some humans can freeze in shock while others spring into action.

The key takeaway is the recognition of how small errors and problems (an “error chain”) can quickly become linked and amplified into disastrous outcomes.

Effective Communication

Your Good Work Should Speak for Itself, But …

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Blame is an Accountability Killer

Wondering what to read next?

Awareness and activism are vital to civic duty, but hatred isn’t meaningful activism

Our values, not politicians, should mold the policies and positions we support

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

When preparing a speech, begin at the end

Idea for Impact: Don’t try to cover too much ground

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Distinct Small Errors Can Become Linked and Amplified into a Big Tragedy

Breakdown of Coordination Under Stress

Recommendation: Read Jon Ziomek’s Collision on Tenerife

Wondering what to read next?