by Ann on August 30, 2010
I caught a blog posting over on the HBR.org site which gave me reason to reflect: Is your culture too nice by Ron Ashekenas.
I’ve been a leader in a lot of different cultures – right off the top of my head, I’ve been part of both Pepsi and Coke, which provides ample fodder for comparison.
And as a rule, I think that Ron is onto something, particularly as it refers to people issues. Ron’s comments are more global, and my own experience would indicate that in today’s culture, the ability to say “I disagree with this idea” has come into fruition. This is of course balanced by cultural differences, as in many cultures disagreement is strongly discouraged. But in more Western influenced companies – which are most globally – the ability to provide conflicting feedback, data, or interpretations I believe has come into its own.
What hasn’t and desperately needs to is honest but conflictive feedback about a person’s performance.
Part of this is a fear of litigation. In today’s world of everything from helicopter parents to “my life partner is an attorney”, providing feedback is often perceived as more trouble than its worth.
My advice is to bust past that fear and tell it like it is. I have found two techniques of note to assist in this process
- Ground your comment in honest emotion, shared unemotionally. Telling someone “you made me feel small” in a calm open way is honest feedback. You can’t sue someone for sharing an emotion. Providing the feedback that “your teammates have come to me with the concern you aren’t pulling your weight. Let me share with you their comments (not named)” is essential. Saying “you piss me off” in a loud voice is honest emotion, but you’re in the emotion. You can’t do that. You have to share the emotion in the third person.
- Have your facts in order. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to coach someone out of the “well I told them they were always late, sniff, and then when they said ‘when’ I like totally freaked out and said ‘usually’ and they just walked out” situation. This one requires no further comment.
If you don’t have the leadership honesty to share at moments like these, you miss the opportunity to create a well-functioning team.
But how does that happen? Not when you miss the opportunity for feedback. In fact, by avoiding conflict the next day will likely be better than if you confront.
Its the days after that you need to be worried about. The person who needed the conflict believes they were in the right. Those who share your concerns and were looking to you for leadership lose trust in you. Both of those trends spiral negatively, not positively.
Conflict, well-managed, about performance and perception is essential. Not avoiding it is the mark of a true leader.
by Ann on August 23, 2010
Juli Inkster found herself disqualified from a golf tourney Sat the 21st, and this in an interesting turn of events given the disqualification in the PGA tournament last weekend.
On the one hand, as Jay Busbee reported in his article on this topic, at least people (or someone) is watching the LPGA tournament. For the league, tournament, and players, that is good news.
But on a more macro scale, I see two large trends which sports organizers, fans, and advertisers will need to take a hard look at:
- Do the rules make sense? A lot of rules were made for a different time and era of sports, equipment, training, and society. To the specific situation with Ms Inkster; she had to wait 30 minutes in an important tournament. She used an aid to stay warmed up, saving her from injury and keeping her game fresh. Hard to argue that may have been a good decision. Rules that indicate aids are illegal in tourney play may or may not have been prepared for 30 minute waits – given that most golf rules predate telecasting, its almost a given. All sports groups need to take a fresh look at the rules – do they make sense? For as I posted last weekend – if they don’t you can lose fans and viewers.
- How do you deal with phoned in observations? Again referencing Busbee’s article, there are several instances where golf has allowed viewer input to change the outcome of the game. Baseball has chosen not to – Galarraga’s heartbreaking loss of a no-hitter this spring being just the latest example of that folly. Football does, and the game has suffered with long review times particularly in the 4th quarter. Having quick review processes transparent to the fan and players alike are imperative – and scripts for telecasters to be sharing the thinking and process knowledgeably during the wait would be a help.
Sports survive because fans participate. What sports leagues need to insure is that they are ready for a social media driven “right of ownership and comment” situation which today’s fans will demand.
by Ann on August 22, 2010
All marketers and leaders: read this article from the New Your Times entitled U.S. Inaction Lets Look-Alike Tubes Kill Patients. The whole article is horrifying. In short, to make this posting make sense without reading it, all tubing in a hospital fits into one another. This means you can put oxygen into a saline drip tube and kill the person. It means you can put a food line into the blood and kill people. The article indicts the FDA for allowing this to happen.
But as a marketer or leader I want you to look at this differently. Its easy to blame the government “they didn’t make me do it”.
Where is the leadership and marketing savvy to look at this situation and not “do what the others do” and instead introduce into the market the right way of doing tubing? Pay some major hospital with a big name to work with it, choose some vital function like medicine delivery, and make those tubes not compatible with the other tubes.
Track how much safer that hospital is, because it will be, and then use the results to guilt everyone else into doing it.
Don’t be the truly embarasing company noted in the article that introduced into the market a machine just like the one that killed people…because they could. Yes the government is a mess and they allowed the introduction. But why would you? What messed up thinking process says “this machine is terminally flawed and likely kills people but we’ll get it approved so let’s launch it anyway”.
Think this doesn’t impact you if you’re not in the medical field?
Wrong.
Let’s take Daytime Running Lights. As I understand it, this is a $3 part you can add to vehicles to make them easier to see during the day, particularly days with poor visibility. The US used to require them, now does not. Canada has for many years, and has the data to prove that their inclusion saves lives. – NOTE 8/22/10 6:20pm Brian thanks for the heads up, here is his further investigation: quick thoughts on DRLs… I LOVE them, but they have never been mandated in the US. GM, realizing the Canadian laws, petitioned and was grant permission to include them. In 2001, recognizing some problems, they petitioned again to reduce intensity (glare), after public comment, the petition was withdrawn – Ann comment – so it was a marginal example, I should have investigated further!
What ever happened to the idea that car companies should look out for the driver? That taking car of the health and well-being of the driver and passengers as well as people in the street and other drivers was in fact part of the accountability of the company. Why are cars still being produced without them? So what if the government doesn’t require it – do it because its right.
When you go to sleep at night, all you leaders and marketers, do you want to know that you in your professional role have done everything within your knowledge to keep the people who use or interact with your product safe, or do you want tell your shareowners you cut corners and people will likely die but its an acceptable risk?
Too many people are answering acceptable risk.
A shout out to Jan, who turned me on to this topic.
by Ann on August 20, 2010
Jeremy Wagstaff is one of my favorite observers of today’s world and the technology behind it – along with an intense dose of “not from the US or Canada”, which makes it all the more interesting.
Not long ago he put up an interesting article: Web 2.0 or Social Media? It depends on the Year.
You have to go check this piece out. He includes a terrific graph of the trends of the “terms” used to describe our online global community. The graph is one of those “wow” moments of clarity – kudos to Wagstaff to ask it and plug it into his post.
Why blog about this myself – because Jeremy points to a very valuable trait we all share – we want to name something, use the right terms, be part of creating the new term, analyze the new term. Right? We’ve all been there – its a double header when you play two baseball games in one day but certainly not a single header if there is one. In fact, singles are a hit that usually but not always occurs in the games played and headers are a way of thinking of something called a slide – but single headers do not exist.
We love this kind of stuff.
What do we miss? Why are people at baseball games? What do they do there? Some leave the park not even knowing the score. What do they leave the park with? A buzz? A good social experience? A business contact? A full tummy? What?
We need to be more curious about what is going on around and why its going on around us and stop worrying so much about the easy stuff – like what its called.
We’re marketers and leaders – let someone else worry about semantics. Worry yourself about the world around us.
