Successful Blog

Have You Got a Change Manager?

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The Value of an Outside Observer

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A while back, I was at lunch with a consultant from a top tier strategy firm, a specialist in change management. Her company works with international mega-corporations. They investigate communication disconnects, process model breakdowns, and unproductive beliefs, habits, and behaviors. Their studies are qualitative and quantitative. Their strategic reports are solid, multi-leveled, interdepartmental, focused and team-based. It’s fascinating to hear how it works.

At the core of the process is helping corporations and individuals see themselves so that they can change to accomplish their goals. No one knows the value of an outside observer better than a world class firm in the business of doing do so.

Yet as the conversation continued, I heard the fatal flaw. The top-tier consultancy was performing a “change management” project within their own firm. No outside professionals were invited to help.

“We can do it ourselves. It’s our business,” was what she said.

I thought, I suppose every one of their clients thinks the same thing.

…

Of course, we’d never make that sort of mistake.

Have you got a change manager?
I started working with mine right after that lunch.

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Need a change?

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Delegation Happens: Working with Friends Can Be Dangerous

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Ever End Up Doing Someone Else’s Work?

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Susannah was an editor who worked me years go. She had a project that needed help and knew just the person she wanted to call … her friend Christie. Christie was an experienced editor on maternity leave.

A meeting was set. Christie came in to get the work. Susannah explained exactly what was entailed and when it was due.

When the due date arrived, the work never came. When the work came, it was less than what Susannah had described. Susannah ended up doing the work and paid her friend anyway.

Ever been there?

Some things to remember when you’re about to delegate work to a friend.

  • Prepare for a friend as you would for someone you’ve never met. One clear signal to your friend and yourself of the business nature of what you’re doing is to treat the conversation as a strictly “work” conversation.
  • Define the relationship as you would with a new client or a new employee. When we’re delegating to a friend, communication can complicate itself. Friendship filters can recast everything that’s said. State your expectations. Write out guidelines and share them.
  • Leave room for the possibility that you’ve misjudged your friend’s skill set. As you describe the task ask whether this sounds like something he or she wants to do and has the time to do well.
  • Explain everything as clearly and in detail. We tend to endow our friends with information they don’t have. Understanding is often assumed — we assume they know things because they’re our friends.
  • Take time to say what the work means to you and your situation. Let the friend know that you are depending on him or her for your success. State clearly why you’re delegating the work and what depends on part of the project that you’re handing over.
  • Talk about who will make corrections or revisions to things that get missed if the work is incomplete or incorrectly executed. If at all possible, have time in the schedule for sending it back to your friend for such revisions.
  • If your ability to communicate during this conversation seems difficult, call off the delegation. It’s better to find someone else than to move forward with what doesn’t seem to be a good communication already.

On the Internet, we meet and make friends easily, but sometimes we endow them with the “halo effect,” thinking their great personality is a sign of their great compentency.
Sometimes the only way to learn that we’ve gotten a wrong impression is by asking for help and finding out the person isn’t who we thought. Usually though, asking a few questions, and offering complete information can get us to a great working relationship.

We all have friends who are better than we are at so many things. Are you finding the right ones to help you when you need them?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Buy the Insider’s Guide. Learn how to write so that the Internet talks back!

Delegation 2: I Can't Let Someone Else Do That!!

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No One Can Do This Like I Would

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Delegation is the art and a science of communication needs. For most of us, it’s a skill we acquire, not a talent that comes naturally. Delegation takes practice in order to fully share
enough information for another person to complete a task successfully. Have you ever left a meeting sure you knew what to do, only to realize later that you didn’t understand. Yeah, me too.

More than that, it takes the ability to communicate the importance of the task and to negotiate a work agreement that shifts the accountability for making sure that the task is on time, complete, and of high quality.

Before you delegate a job, have a plan to communicate to the person who’s joining your project. Great communication will help in making sure that you pass on accountability and a sense of mission with the work that you’re handing over.

  • Start with the big picture. Decide what every person on the project must know. Offering the big picture context helps a new player immediately frame decisions and judgment calls properly.
  • Show where this piece fits. By placing the delegated assignment into the context. We communicate its importance to us and to the success of the project.
  • Explain and show exactly what a good result would look like. Write guidelines or goals for the task. Have examples of a prototype or something similar that you and the delegatee can discuss. Take the time to say what you want and what you like.
  • Invest more time if the meeting can’t be face to face. When a conversation isn’t face-to-face, communication degrades significantly. Some figures say it goes as low as 35% comprehension without visual reinforcement. Send an agenda or samples before you meet.
  • Know your goals and how you’ll check whether you’ve communicated clearly. Include and early sample to check that messages you think you communicated are the same ones that were heard. A quick look at a first step can save a project gone way off kilter.

The minute we delegate, communication becomes key. Unfortunately in an effort to show respect for other professionals we often tell them less than they need to know and still think we’re telling them too much. In like manner rather than looking like they don’t know, the often ask less than they might.

What’s the single biggest error you find you make when you’re asking someone to do work for you?

Tomorrow … Delegation Happens: Working with Friends Can Be Dangerous

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Buy the Insider’s Guide. Learn how to write so that the Internet talks back!

When Anything Is Nothing Next to Something … One Sentence that Will Keep You Stuck

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People Who Need Help

In my business and though my conference, I meet people and businesses who are looking to move forward. I love helping people be successful. I love building businesses. Some make easy to help them. It’s a pleasure to help them get what they need or want. Some think they they make it easy, but in reality they do not.

One sentence I’ve heard too often lately has made me realize that it has the opposite effect of its intent. The sentence is …

I’ll do anything.

That sentence doesn’t win clients, doesn’t gain partners, doesn’t attract friends of the very best sort.

When Anything Ix Nothing Next to Something

Attraction happens when we know who we are. Whether we’re an organization or an individual, we need to attract people. Nothing attracts like focus. Focus draw others to us in the same way our eyes will follow a shining light curving through the dark.

That focus says they know where they’re going. They’re predictable. They’re productive. They’re positively contributing. Even when they aren’t in our business, we can learn something from them while we’re helping them.

Focus drives people and organizations to know things. You can bet they’ll know what sort of help they need. They’ll also know what values and skills they have to offer. When they ask for assistance, they’ll make it a conversation about working together. You’ll meet on the same side of the table.

People with focus offer something — they offer best of what they’ve got.

Focused people and organizations are easy to work because they come with an offer, a package put together with some thought. They do the work before you meet, which shows a high possibility that they’ll deliver. If the offer doesn’t match perfectly, it’s a place to start.

“I’ll do anything” is nothing next to something.

“I’ll do anything” leaves it to you to decide the offer. It leaves it to you to think up what the package might be and how to construct the relationship. It’s your time and it’s your thought put to work guessing at their values and their skills. Not a good idea. How can you be sure that they will deliver? It’s like saying “Here’s a tool you’ve never seen. Use it for anything you want.” The anything offer is nothing, because you have to decide everything about it for it to work. You do the work of thinking. You take the risk. They’re delegating up.

Turning Anything Into Something Valuable

Anything might only seem like something to the person who is offering it. Anything is nothing if the person getting the offer doesn’t know what to do with it. To turn an anything into a something think it all the way through. Be able to say exactly how your finished work will make what they do

  • easier
  • faster
  • more valuable

Then you’ve got something valuable — something worth talking about.

Ever taken someone up on an “I’ll do anything” offer. How easy was it to figure out what that anything would be? Would you take the offer again?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

What Business Are You In

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Cam Beck from ChaosScenario shares an interesting insight:

: Are you in the business you think you are in?

…imagine you’re Wilbur or Orville Wright, who, in addition to running their own bicycle business, decided to take on the “problem of flight,” which included not only successfully flying a heavier-than-air craft under its own power, but also maneuvering in mid-air.

Oh, and due to a general human intolerance to blunt force trauma and impalement, landing alive consistently was another important issue to solve.

But what business were the Wrights in? Weren’t they just bicycle men?

Well, yeah. But they were so much more than that.

They were even more than entrepreneurs or even inventors. They were all of these things.

But chiefly they were problem solvers who, importantly, were not afraid to try, though they might fail.

Ray Croc, the founder of McDonalds restaurants, is famously known for telling an audience that McDonalds was not in the food business, rather the real estate business.

When you take a step back from the day-to-day operation of your business what does it look like? Are you in the “Marketing Business” or are you in the “Relationship Business”?

Can changing a couple of words in the label change the entire meaning and scope of what you do? What might happen if you changed some other labels in your life and work?

What Do You Want to Contribute as Social Media Community Member?

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Building a Community

The irony is that so many of us work alone, yet we build communities. That thought struck me boldly when this week I heard three people say how much they were looking forward to working in an office with people.

That got me thinking that an essential part of knowing how to built a community is understanding what it means to be a community member.

On Monday when we were talking about how social media can help us build a better business, Richard Reeve beautifully wrote this post for me. He described his contribution to a community “barn raising.” He said …

When asked to come and help raise these boards, it means:

    1. I realize that I need to bring along a team of five other folks I can count on to handle our given task. Wood is heavy.

    2. Ask clear questions not only of what our team will do, but how it will fit into the overall scheme of the raising, so as to maximize the remaining sunlight.

    3. While staying focused on the assigned task, realize that things seldom go as planned, so keep a flexible attitude and be willing to lend a hand when and where needed. The overall goal is more important than the parts.

    4. The only result that matters, that every participant can take pride in the resulting structure…

    oh…and:
    5. Bring your own tool belt. Who has fifty hammers?

Who wouldn’t want those values and motives in every community member … ?

When a business, a non-profit, or an organization builds a space for us and makes all of the decisions without us, it’s like moving into a house that doesn’t have any of our stuff. We don’t own it. We’ll always be visitors. If that business, non-profit, or organization lets us contribute as the house goes up, we become a part of the process and feel ownership. Of course we don’t have time to contribute building to every space in which we participate, but when we do, it changes the the way experience that community in profoundly personal way.

What do you want to contribute as a social media community member? What can we expect from community members before we start?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!