Worth the effort?

This simple and most obvious reality, explained perfectly in Seth’s blog this morning, seems to be lost on so many managers and potential leaders I’ve encountered… yet we expect others to get it right every time.

Now, as leaders, we have to step into the shoes of these potential leaders and understand why they don’t have the capacity for empathy. At first, we might think it’s not worth the effort… but it is, every time.

Stop Reading Most of Your Email

This is a great interview with CEO Kaspar Rorsted of Henkel, an industrial products company in Germany. His remarks about the use of email are dead on. I might have been 50% more productive if I had NOT read all the email I was copied on, and I probably could have avoided a ton of pointless controversy. Live and learn, again.

via Corner Office – Kasper Rorsted – E-Mail Can’t Replace Interaction, Says Henkel’s Chief – Question – NYTimes.com.

Begin Again…

As a few friends have told me, more than once, it’s time I started blogging again. This time however, I won’t always be posting lengthy columns that were published in print. It will look more like my tweets feed on the right, but expanded to include commentary – and the blog format works perfect for that. No promises, however, that I won’t engage in lengthy postings. We’ll just see what happens.

Context is King

This column appears in the February 2010 issue of Connecting Rochester magazine.

Alan M. Webber is the co-founding editor of Fast Company magazine, one of the fastest growing business magazines ever published.

So when my cousin Doug Miller of Fishers Development Group recommended Webber’s book, he knew it would get my attention.

Before Fast Company, Webber was the editorial director and managing editor of the Harvard Business Review.  He also swam in the deep waters of federal, state and local government contributing to the progressive transformation of Portland, Oregon in the 1970s.

I’ve just finished Webber’s Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths For Winning at Business Without Losing Yourself.  The lessons he’s documented could serve as a textbook for every size business, and save many of us from self-inflicted wounds caused by an inability to see through to accepted truths.

The rule that speaks loudest to me about our information age is Rule #32 – Content isn’t King. Context is King.  My need to have clear, comprehensible information has grown almost as fast as my ability to gather more and more information about any topic imaginable. I have an intense desire for resources that will help me make sense of the piles of data that I can summon in just a few minutes with my fingertips.

Context, Webber explains, was why an article in the Harvard Business Review carried more weight than one in most other business magazines on the rack. And Context was why Fortune 500 companies paid more for advice from McKinsey than from the thousands of new, untested consulting firms. “Information is a commodity,” Webber writes. “Context creates value.”

In journalism, objectivity is a goal to which many say they aspire. But  Webber says the notion is illogical, and I agree. We can have rules to guide us through source confirmation and fact checking, but they don’t really impact the deep decisions that steer our minds to the finished product.

How do we decide what to leave in a story, and what to leave out? What do we start with and what do we bury at the end? What descriptive words do we use to color the facts as we report them?

While working on a piece for HBR with Citibank’s legendary Walter Wriston, Webber was given a quick lesson on content versus context. “Every day I’m presented with three types of information,” Wriston said. “Facts, wrong facts, and damned lies. My job is to know which is which.”

That should be our job too in business, whether we’re looking at performance metrics or customer feedback. “What we value most is a trusted point of view,” Webber writes.

That’s what we pay our top people to do, and it’s what the best bosses want their “value-adding employees to be doing – evaluation, interpretation, analysis, synthesis, perspective, judgement – context.”

Information is cheap and bland, Webber says. “What we should hone as our own capability – is a convincing, compelling vision of how the world looks. What’s valuable is having your own point of view and having the confidence to express it,” he continues. “Anything else is available 24/7 on the Web and everywhere else – which makes it worthless.”

Webber’s 52 Rules are catalogued in a way that makes this book a great daily or weekly business reader. Very digestable chunks of context, worthy of your time.

Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Yourself
By Alan M. Webber (Harper-Collins, 270 pp., $24.99)

Predictions 2010 by An NRO Symposium

I always look forward to this… enjoy.

Predictions 2010 by An NRO Symposium on National Review Online.

Hoping everyone has a safe and happy new year, full of prosperity.

Looking back… and ahead

This column appears in the Dec 2009 / Jan 2010 issue of Connecting Rochester magazine.

Launching a print magazine probably doesn’t make it to the top ten list of new businesses most likely to succeed.

But here we are, closing in on the end of our first year. And there are many people to thank for making Connecting Rochester magazine a reality.

First on the list is you, the reader, and your fellow chamber of commerce members. I’m grateful for the cooperation of your organization’s leadership and their ongoing support. Please continue to offer your feedback and suggestions to us.

In the early part of 2010 we intend to start expanding distribution to other business groups throughout the Greater Rochester area. We also will make copies available for sale at local newsstands and offer affordable subscription rates for the general public.

We clearly couldn’t produce and mail this magazine to you with out the investment of advertising dollars from local business owners who see a great value in delivering their marketing messages to you.

Please look for opportunities to support these businesses and consider the opportunity to benefit from your own ad campaign in the magazine. Our sales director Connie Contestabile is always ready to meet with you and discuss a plan. Trust me – she can help you solve your problems.

Special thanks to Dave Young and his staff at Webster Printing on Empire Boulevard in Webster. Their constant willingness to remain flexible with a production schedule was essential to helping us succeed, and they are always standing by ready to offer their expertise.

I’m very grateful to the wonderful columnists who share with us their unique perspective on the business world.  And also the contributing writers who exhibit their talent for storytelling. It’s been a pleasure getting to know them all and learning from them as well.

We’re very fortunate to have one of the areas most talented and professional writers overseeing the content of our magazine. Editor Karen Boughton Siegelman is just plain great – one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet – and I’m constantly amazed by her ability to capture each business owner’s experience.

Karen and Connie were both extremely influential in helping lay the groundwork for this magazine and their dedication is tireless. I consider myself very lucky to be able to work with them.

There is one other individual who played a tremendous role in shaping the type of magazine you’re now holding in your hands – and that person is Bruno Sniders. I don’t have enough space here to adequately express my appreciation to him.

Just know that Bruno was the one who was willing to ask me the really tough questions, the ones I was almost afraid to ask myself.  Every business owner should have someone like him checking their assumptions and predictions. Hopefully he’ll share his writing talent with us again in 2010.

And speaking of predictions… I have one. Our economy will improve throughout the upcoming year and new businesses will continue to sprout up and flourish. You’re probably thinking that it sounds like a pretty safe bet.  Good!  Keep thinking that.  Wake up every day consciously looking for new ways to connect, collaborate and grow.

In case you didn’t know, or have forgotten, there are many outstanding and generous business owners in our area willing to help other business owners succeed. I know this because I’ve met a lot of them this year. Their generosity has had a significant positive impact on Spiritus Media Group and we intend to pay them back by doing the same for others.

As most of these folks already know, you really can’t keep prosperity unless you remain willing to give it away.

Peace on earth…

Merry Christmas

It’s in the mail…

There’s a huge sense of relief and accomplishment each time we get a new issue out.

The Dec/Jan issue of Connecting Rochester magazine was delivered to the post office on Thursday.

So most folks will see it in their mailboxes over these next few days.

www.ConnectingRochester.com

Expecting only the best from others

This column appeared in the November 2009 issue of Connecting Rochester magazine.

As the deadline for this issue approached, I simply could not get excited about any topic I considered. So I had abandoned the idea of a column this month and began to consider how I was going to finish the layout of the magazine without it.

Grumbling about this to my daughter, she mentioned that she was having trouble wrapping up an essay assignment.  Reading through it with her, I was first filled with pride – she has a great mind and I love how she thinks – and then excitement.

This was the catalyst I needed – and the source was completely unexpected. We finished up her essay and she surprisingly went along with the idea of having it published on the same page as mine. (It is posted below.)

Over the past several months, I’ve watched Christa work with her coach and her teammates to develop their winning routine. Driving back and forth together from early season practice sessions, she would be texting the other team captains about one issue or another, debating the options. Next, she and her friends would be contacting the coach and seeking more guidance, or offering details that supported their opinion on what decision should be made.

There is a tremendous amount of thought, effort and dedication that goes into any worthwhile project and a cheerleading routine is certainly no different.  I couldn’t help but notice the skill sets these girls had developed over the past few years as a result of their education on and off the mat.

While striving to do their best individually, there is always the underlying premise that everyone expect the best from each other. Without this vital component – coupled with a shared vision – no degree of achievement will add lasting value to your efforts.

Now, you’d have a hard time finding a business leader or a manager of people who would admit to expecting the worst from others. But we’ve all known them. There are some people who have been conditioned, usually with the help of their company’s top leadership, to look for somebody doing something wrong. Like Pavlov’s Dog they get a tasty treat, in the form of a pat on the back, by identifying the under-performers.

Most often, you already know who they are. The question is: how are you going to react to them.

Expecting the best means that you take specific action to convey to others your belief that you know they are capable of improving – that you expect to see their best, and that they should expect it too.

If you look for and expect failure in others, trust me, they’ll never let you down. And finding that failure that you so accurately predicted only adds to your expectation of finding more, until you really don’t expect the best from others any longer – even though you say you do.

Business owners and those in management, like a good coach or team captain, play an extremely critical role in creating the type of environment that enables people to perform to the best of their abilities. Expect the best from others, and you’ll get it. In doing so, they’ll get your best.

I have no doubt that my daughter and her friends will be successful in business and in life if they act on the beliefs that allowed them to succeed in cheerleading. And business owners looking to recruit talented employees, should think about hiring a cheerleader.

I know who’ll be available in about 4 years.

Accepting only the best from yourself

This column appeared in the November 2009 issue of Connecting Rochester magazine.

By Christa Grundman

When you have worked your hardest and given all that you have to give, there comes a point when the result of it is out of your control.  All you’re left with is having to accept what your best effort has brought you.

With application and aim, comes an appreciation for the gifts in life. Without the determination to achieve, comes regret. Fearing the loss of a dream has driven many to succeed.

Swarming the mat like fish in an ocean of blue, each eager young face on my cheerleading team couldn’t look at a single team-mate without seeing the same reflection in the eyes of the other. Hearts were racing beneath the vest of each one of us as we were dressed uniformly from head to toe performing side by side the girls we had been working closest with over the past few months.

It was amazing to see that the same girls who had earlier crowded every bathroom we could find to fix our make-up and make sure not a single hair was out of place, now could not care less what we looked like. Having  finished our routine, and having worried about all that any one person could, there was nothing left for us to do except wait.

As I looked from one teammate to the other I could envision all that frantically ran through their minds. From motion to motion, we thought back to examine every ding, slap, and clap of our routine. There was no room for error because a single mistake can mean that one point that sets you apart from the rest.

A single point difference can drop you second to your biggest competitors. That possibility is what makes every girl stop and think to ourselves, “If only I had pushed a little harder.”

It all comes down to how well you have prepared yourself for those 2 minutes and 38 seconds. The effort put forth in a very short amount of time determines the result of months and months of 3 hour practices and beating yourself up over the smallest of imperfections.

When you put all that you have into one short routine, the last thing you want to come out with is an ounce of regret. Whether you win or lose, knowing that your best effort was put forth is what will truly matter in the end.

Knowing that you did not perform to the best of your ability will remain a constant, nagging reminder of a lost opportunity.  Win or lose, achieving is nothing if clouded with regret.

No matter what you try to accomplish in life, you must go into it striving to do your best, rather than fighting to win.  No regrets.

Christa Grundman, a senior at Bishop Kearney High School, is one of the captains of her varsity cheerleading team. Her squad just completed an undefeated fall season, claiming a Section V crown for the school for the 18th year in a row. She plans to study marketing and advertising in the fall of 2010 at a college yet to be determined. She is also the daughter of Pam and Jerry Grundman, publisher of Connecting Rochester magazine.