Right Attitudes

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Commitment, Not Compliance

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For some managers, fear is a dirty little secret … they use it when they are either unwilling or unable to persuade employees to work together to achieve goals.

Fear gets results but it does so at a cost. Fear is saps enthusiasm and stifles constructive deliberation.

  • Step back and work with your employee to determine performance objectives, goals, and priorities. Then, let your employee translate those objectives into tasks and determine how best to perform the task.
  • Don’t interfere excessively or micromanage. Don’t insist that there’s only “one best way” to do the job. Trust employees to make the right choices to reach the end result.
  • Don’t be a pushover, either. Be tough where you must be, kind where you can be. Managers can be strong without instilling fear. Be steadfast and unrelenting in your quest for getting results.
  • Let the employee customize the job to reflect her strengths and weaknesses to the extent possible, without compromising the core contributions expected of her role. Allowing the maximum possible use of your employees’ motivated abilities to achieve targeted results will not only use strengths to the maximum, but also drives intrinsic job satisfaction.
  • Take the time to get to know each employee’s unique set of talents. Try to dole out the available work to best match your employees’ talents.
  • Share the glory. Giving others a chance to claim credit is an easy, and effective, way to get results. As Dale Carnegie wrote masterful self-help manual How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936,) be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.” Learn to overlook small mistakes, but address problems before they escalate.

Idea for Impact: There is potentially no more powerful motivator than the intrinsic satisfaction that an employee could gain from autonomy under structure, and from using one’s motivated talents. Find ways to entice commitment from your employees. Don’t force compliance by virtue of authority.

Choosing Your Leadership Style: Detail-Orientation

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As Amazon’s Andy Jassy takes over the reins from Jeff Bezos, the Wall Street Journal has a profile of Jassy’s ultra-detail-oriented management style:

Former colleagues say Mr. Jassy would spend enormous amounts of time on the narrowest of details if he thought it was important. … When an AWS data center in Virginia was hit by a major outage, Mr. Jassy personally got involved in figuring out the problem. It turned out a technician had been checking a generator and the door accidentally bumped into a switch, shutting it off. Mr. Jassy dug into the incident and pressed the team to redesign the generators. When the CEO is digging at that level, everyone at the company starts to dig at the same level.

Flexibility and a detail-oriented mindset are leadership qualities that Jassy shares with Bezos. As at many founder-led firms, Amazon’s corporate culture has mimicked these traits, and the colossus has historically been able to jump on opportunities quickly and quality-control its organizational capabilities.

Idea for Impact: A fundamental duty of leadership is to guide an organization’s collective awareness. Attention to detail (without micromanagement) matters. When leaders don’t really care about the details and are content to produce low-quality work, their teams will start to do, too.

In areas where influential leaders aren’t detail-focused, they have somebody on their teams that does. Apple’s Steve Jobs famously focused on creativity and innovation while relying on Tim Cook and his tight-knit team of operations executives to run Apple’s operations.

Do More of What Makes You Productive

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American playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network, and The Newsroom) takes six to eight showers a day whenever he suffers from writer’s block. After realizing that a quick refresher allows him to collect his thoughts, Sorkin had a small shower unit fitted in his office to keep his creativity flowing.

Indeed, per “incubation,” the best solutions to problems can sometimes come about suddenly and unexpectedly when you aren’t actively working on your issues.

Idea for Impact: Do more of what makes you productive. Expose yourself to as many productivity ideas as possible. Test different productivity approaches. Keep what works for you; discard the rest.

A Real Lesson from the Downfall of Theranos: Silo Mentality

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The extraordinary rise and fall of Theranos, Silicon Valley’s biggest fraud, makes an excellent case study on what happens when teams don’t loop each other in.

Theranos’ blood-testing device never worked as glorified by its founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes. She created an illusion that became one of the greatest start-up stories. She kept her contraption’s malfunctions and her company’s problems shockingly well hidden—even from her distinguished board of directors.

At the core of Holmes’s sham was how she controlled the company’s flow of information

Holmes and her associate (and then-lover) Sunny Balwani operated a culture of fear and intimidation at Theranos. They went to such lengths as hiring superstar lawyers to intimidate and silence employees and anyone else who dared to challenge their methods or expose their devices’ deficiencies.

Holmes had the charade going for so long by keeping a tight rein on who talked to whom. She controlled the flow of information within the company. Not only that, she swiftly fired people who dared to question her approach. She also forcefully imposed non-disclosure agreements even for those exiting the company.

In other words, Holmes went to incredible lengths to create and maintain a silo mentality in her startup. Her intention was to wield much power, prevent employees from talking to each other, and perpetuate her deceit.

A recipe for disaster at Theranos: Silo mentality and intimidation approach

'Bad Blood' by John Carreyrou (ISBN 152473165X) Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou’s book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018; my summary) is full of stories of how Holmes went out of her way to restrain employees from conferring about what they were working on. Even if they worked on the same project, Holmes made siloed functional teams report to her directly. She would edit progress reports before redirecting problems to other team heads.

Consider designer Ed Ku’s mechatronics team responsible for designing all the intricate mechanisms that control the measured flow of biochemical fluids. Some of his team’s widgets were overheating, impinging on one another and cross-contaminating the clinical fluids. Holmes wouldn’t allow Ku and his team to talk to the teams that improved the biochemical processes.

Silo mentality can become very problematic when communication channels become too constricted and organizational processes too bureaucratic. Creativity gets stifled, collaboration limited, mistakes—misdeeds in the case of Theranos—suppressed, and collective objectives misaligned.

Idea for Impact: Functional silos make organizations slow, bureaucratic, and complicated

Innovation hinges increasingly on interdisciplinary cooperation. Examine if your leadership attitude or culture is unintentionally contributing to insufficient accountability, inadequate information-sharing, and limited collaboration between departments—especially on enterprise-wide initiatives.

Inspirational Quotations #855

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A man who correctly guesses a woman’s age may be smart, but he’s not very bright.
—Lucille Ball (American Actor)

Imitation is a necessity of human nature.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist, Author)

What is the people but a herd confused, a miscellaneous rabble, who extol things vulgar, and well weigh’d, scarce worth the praise? they praise and they admire they know not what, and know not whom, but as one leads the other.
—John Milton (English Poet)

When roused to rage the maddening populace storms, their fury-like a rolling flame, bursts forth unquenchable; but give its violence ways, it spends itself, and as its force abates, learns to obey and yields it to your will.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

A man is not finished when he’s defeated; he’s finished when he quits.
—Richard Nixon (American Head of State)

In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?
—Augustine of Hippo (Roman-African Christian Philosopher)

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
—Karl Marx (German Philosopher, Economist)

One’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into action … which bring results.
—Florence Nightingale (English Nurse)

Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation, and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked always deserves respect or pity as the case may be.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Every good act is charity. A man’s true wealth hereafter is the good that he does in this world to his fellows.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

Don’t give up. Courage is my conviction.
—Dhirubhai Ambani (Indian Businessperson)

A silent mouth is melodious.
—Irish Proverb

Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion.
—Thomas Hobbes (English Political Philosopher)

Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and to look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity…
—Edward de Bono (British Psychologist, Writer)

Overcoming Personal Constraints is a Key to Success

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Why do some people reach ever-higher levels of achievement, while others struggle or just plug along?

Norman Vincent Peale, the doyen of the think-positive mindset, provides a particularly illustrative example in You Can If You Think You Can (1987):

In Tokyo, I once met an American, an inspiring man, from Pennsylvania. Crippled from some form of paralysis, he was on a round-the-world journey in a wheelchair, getting a huge kick out of all his experiences. I commented that nothing seemed to get him down. His reply was a classic: “It’s only my legs that are paralyzed. The paralysis never got into my mind.”

No matter how formidable your talents, you’ll be held back by certain attitudes and behaviors that limit your achievements.

Your personal constraints—some of them beyond your control—will determine your level of success. Identify those constraints and make a plan to triumph over them.

Idea for Impact: The more you can reframe your attitudes toward the past, future, and present, the more likely you’ll find a meaningful life. Don’t let your constraints lay down what you can achieve.

Easy Ways to Boost Your Focus & Stop Multitasking

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If you’re struggling to focus on getting work done, perhaps the following tips may help.

1. Simplify Your Environment. We, humans, are biologically programmed to pay attention to new stimuli. Disable notifications on your phone, close the unnecessary windows on your screen, and clear up unnecessary papers. Switch off to switch on. Find a quiet space in the office or retreat to the local library or a tearoom.

2. Make Your Mind Up to Focus. Set aside a block of time—even if it’s just ten minutes—to handle a mentally challenging task without interruptions. Quite often, seemingly difficult tasks get easier once you get working on them, even if you force yourself to go through the motions. Extend the time further—schedule ten, twenty, or thirty more minutes of work.

3. Embrace Your Struggles. Any task that takes mental effort, or involves critical thinking and creativity, is going to be a little daunting initially. When you hit a wall, don’t quit and breakout to something easier. Labor through and push onwards.

4. Take Adequate Breaks. Humans work in cycles; we can focus for a period but then need time to rest. Try the popular ‘Pomodoro Technique’: work for a concentrated 25 minutes, take a 5-minute time out, then dive back in for another Pomodoro. After four Pomodoros, take a long break. During each break, leave your desk or take a break from your screen. Go for a quick walk around the block, step away from your desk for a few minutes, or make a cup of tea. Realizing that you only have a set amount of time to complete a task before a break, the Pomodoro Technique tends to keep you on the task rather than drifting from one diversion to another.

By ditching multitasking and regaining focus, you can reduce distraction, lower stress levels, and put more of your energy into what’s important instead—one single task at a time.

Leaders Need to Be Strong and Avoid Instilling Fear

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Fear is many a leader’s dirty little secret. He can use it when he’s either unwilling or unable to persuade his team to work together to achieve a specific goal.

Sure, fear gets results. However, it does so at a great cost.

Fear can be enormously helpful for spurring change, particularly during periods of acute threat. But fear can backfire under certain circumstances, especially when creativity is necessary. Using fear and intimidation as a motivator only shuts down people’s brains.

People don’t always think and act rationally when they’re afraid. Fear and anxiety make it more difficult to have their energy and enthusiasm to keep going.

A leader needs to be strong without instilling fear. Often all a leader can do to motivate people is to foster a workplace wherein people feel safe bringing themselves to work.

People can contribute, be creative, and be motivated internally. There’s no need to watch them like a hawk, micromanage excessively, track every move they make, question every decision, or enact rules that make people feel constrained and under surveillance.

Idea for Impact: Steer clear of a tyrannical management style. Use feedback and coaching to be considerate and encouraging whenever you can be, and tough when you must be.

How to Develop Customer Service Skills // Summary of Lee Cockerell’s ‘The Customer Rules’

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Becoming great at customer service doesn’t require you to excel at a zillion things. You’ll just need to identify the core principles and get the basics right.

“At the end of the day, everything a business leader does is in the service of customer service … the customer always rules, and there are Rules for winning customers, keeping customers, and turning loyal customers into advocates and emissaries for your business,” writes Lee Cockerell in his prescriptive manual on The Customer Rules: The 39 Essential Rules for Delivering Sensational Service (2013.)

Cockerell is a veteran of the hospitality industry and an eminent corporate trailer. He spent eight years with Hilton, 17 years with Marriott, and 16 years with the Walt Disney. Before retirement, he was the executive vice president of operations at Walt Disney World in Florida and oversaw the resort’s 40,000 employees at 20 hotels, four theme parks, and two water parks.

Non-obvious Customer Service Insights

Cockerell structures his guidebook along 39 tips to serve customers with consistency, efficiency, creativity, and sincerity. He glosses over everything—hiring right, communicating a clear and relevant customer promise, fostering a customer-oriented culture, and creating a superior employee experience. Those employees can deliver a great customer experience, respond to complaints, and practice verbal skills to express empathy.

  • Make customer service every employee’s responsibility. Everything every employee does can have tremendous repercussions on the service your customers receive, and therefore your bottom line. “Pay close attention to every decision you make, every policy you announce, every procedure you introduce, every person you hire, every promotion you award, every e-mail you send, every conversation you have, every hand you shake, and every back you slap.”
  • You win customers one at a time and lose them a thousand at a time. Satisfied customers will spread the word only if they’re truly blown away their experience. Angry customers are “far more motivated to shout about their feelings, and furious exposes get a lot more attention than glowing testimonials. Humans are wired to pay more attention to the negative than the positive.”
  • Anticipate your customers’ needs. Discover what customers aren’t getting from your competitors and give it to them. Customers’ problems are a good source of business innovations. “Great businesses stand out by being different from the rest in the right way: by finding customer needs that are going unmet and figuring out a way to meet them.”
  • Keep an eye on your competitors. Be a copycat. Look outside your industry for great ideas and tweak them for their own purposes. “Don’t just imitate; pay attention to everything around you, spot the best ideas, and then find a better way to apply them.”
  • Treat customers the way you’d treat your loved ones. “First and last impressions have a tremendous influence on a customer’s lasting impression. A cheery hello and a sincere good-bye can leave a customer with a memory of a positive experience, regardless of what happens in between.”
  • Treat every customer like a regular. Familiarity breeds repeat business. “Do whatever you can to make regular customers feel like family and new customers feel like regulars. Remember the theme song from the TV series Cheers? Don’t you want to go “where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came”? Make all your customers feel that you’re really glad they came.”
  • Prioritize WIN, “what’s important now,” your customers’ immediate needs, desires, and concerns. “Even a nod, a gesture, some brief eye contact, a pleasant “I’ll be right with you. Please make yourself comfortable”—that’s all it takes. People want to be acknowledged.”
  • Surprise your customers with a little extra when they least expect it. Neuroscientists have confirmed that the human brain “craves the excitement of surprise. The region of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, aka the pleasure center, experiences more activation when a pleasurable stimulus comes unexpectedly than it does when the same pleasure is predictable. “So if you get a present for your birthday, that’s nice. But you’ll like it a lot more if you get a present and it’s not your birthday.””
  • Don’t try too hard. “Being excessively solicitous and eager to please is annoying.” It makes you seem phony. “Think how annoying it is when a server at a restaurant stops by your table every five minutes to ask if everything’s okay with your meal.” No one likes to be pestered constantly. “If your customers have to stifle the urge to scream, “Go away!” or, “Leave us alone!” you’re trying too hard.”

Recommendation: Read Lee Cockerell’s The Customer Rules. With plenty of anecdotes, experiences, and very short no-nonsense chapters, this book is an enjoyable summary of the many simple—but often overlooked—first principles of building a customer-oriented culture and delivering great customer service.

Inspirational Quotations #845

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Life itself is the proper binge.
—Julia Child (American Cook, Author)

Companies are rarely criticized for the things that they failed to try. But they are, many times, criticized for things they tried and failed at.
—Jeff Bezos (American Businessman)

Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment, and increases the capacity for service.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
—Mary Oliver (American Poet)

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (Science-fiction writer)

How much folly there is in human affairs.
—Persius (Roman Poet)

All great victories, be they in politics, business, art, or seduction, involved resolving vexing problems with a potent cocktail of creativity, focus, and daring. When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go—carving you a path. “The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “instruct.”
—Ryan Holiday (American Author)

It takes time for a fruit to mature and acquire sweetness and become eatable; time is a prime factor for most good fortunes.
—The Vedas (Sacred Books of Hinduism)

Genius is an intellect that has become unfaithful to its destiny.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing.
—Toni Morrison (American Novelist)

Silence is the first door to spiritual eminence.
—Adi Shankaracharya (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Schools currently excel in encouraging children to express opinions, but are deficient in encouraging children to say, for example, “Oh, that’s different from my perspective … tell me more.”
—Warren Farrell (American Educator, Activist)

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.
—Baruch Spinoza (Dutch Philosopher)

As time goes on, you’ll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn’t, doesn’t. Time solves most things. And what time can’t solve, you have to solve yourself.
—Haruki Murakami (Japanese Novelist)