Forget about “show me a sign” as Breaking Point sings. Or “show me the money,” as the character Rod Tidwell yelled at Jerry Maguire in the movie of the same name.

In today’s time-starved, skeptical work world, time is often more valuable than money. (Just consider all the conveniences you’re willing to pay for to save some time. And this applies at work too.)

Before we’re willing to give a new change initiative at work our time and attention—much less our commitment—we need to see multiple signs that the leaders are serious and committed to the change themselves.

For example, take this organization I’ve been working with. Employees in one office have been vocally complaining to co-workers, local leadership and corporate HR that they feel disenfranchised for a number of reasons. (To protect the organization’s identity, I’ll say no more about the reasons.)

The extremely low scores on the most recent employee engagement survey punctuate their points. Also, a few employees have started walking with their feet, primarily transferring to other offices.

We’re working on several interventions to turn things around. So far, employees through one-on-one conversations and formal feedback have said they’re pleased with the actions; however, many people also have said they doubt whether the changes will stick.

So we need to show everyone some small supportive signs on a daily basis to reinforce the big actions and gain some momentum. These signals would align with the words and other actions and would demonstrate that we’re moving in the right direction—not backsliding, drifting or stopping.

For example, we should be using as least five different types of signs:

1. Directions—Explaining where we are in the change process, such as providing status updates about the formation of rapid response teams, the team members, their work to date, and their upcoming plans.
2. Reminders—Recapping what’s been done to date, what’s on the horizon, and how everything links together.
3. Symbolic steps—Having leaders do things that support the change, such as spending more time in the office and meeting informally with entry level employees.
4. Reinforcements—Catching employees doing the right things that support the change and recognizing them privately and publicly, which will encourage others to join them.
5. Milestone markers—Acknowledging the progress we’re making—the good, bad, and ugly—at key dates, such as the 30-day mark since the formation of the rapid response teams or at other critical targets.

So far, I have to admit I’m having more success pointing out the misleading and contradictory signs the leaders are sending rather than praising the leaders for their high-quality signs—which is not an ideal situation. (For example, when leaders agree that employees are working very long hours and should try to have a healthy life/work integration, leaders shouldn’t send employees email messages on a summer Saturday afternoon.)

Those who coach or train humans, dogs, and other mammals know that you get the best results in behavior change when you carefully reward the good behaviors and ignore the bad. (For a quick, enjoyable read about this, check out Amy Sutherland’s New York Times essay What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage. She later turned this into a book, What Shamu Taught Me about Life, Love, Marriage, which is soon to be a motion picture.) So I want to find good behaviors to commend, especially around this important area of signs.

One of the challenging things about signs is that some humans (and almost all dogs and other mammals) excel at noticing and reading signs. So until employees see multiple signs all pointing to the positive direction of the change, they’re not going to have any reason to believe that these leaders are serious about the change.

How well do the signs you send match your words and other actions?

Gusto com Schafshügel, Gustav, Gus & Goose

This dog doesn’t care what you call him, as long as you call him for meals.

Leaders need to be more thick-skinned (or furry?) about their pet names, especially the nicknames for their companies and products.

For example, consider the furor over the G.M. memo to Chevrolet employees earlier this summer about saying “Chevrolet” instead of “Chevy” to support brand consistency. As reported by The New York Times, one of the G.M. execs wrote, “The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer.”

What were these execs thinking? And where have they been? You can’t dictate nicknames, off label use of products, and almost anything else in the public domain anymore—especially creations now woven into our culture.

“Once it (the car) became an American icon, America took it away from G.M.,” said 83-year-old Dick Guldstrand, a long-time racer who has been inducted into the Corvette Hall of Fame in the New York Times article. “They made it a Chevy. You’re doing a disservice to all the people by telling them not to call it a Chevy.”

If the G.M. execs are still clueless, they should familiarize themselves with the fans of TV shows, movies, comic books, and other entertainment genres who spend hours in “fanfic” –creative writing using the characters they love to develop new plots.

Within the walls of their own organization, the G.M. executives may not think they’re experiencing much textual poaching , one of the aspects of fanfic behavior. While academics have been using this term for more than 25 years now, the Internet  and especially YouTube have made it so much easier for people to create and share new communities with beloved characters. In these worlds, Chevrolet, Star Wars characters, and Harry Potter are hardly commodities; they belong to all of us, however we reconstruct them.

The concept of textual poaching now extends throughout our society, including inside organizations. We’re all commenters, contributors, and creators in our new culture of sharing. And this has major implications for leaders and those who work with them.

As Charlene Li writes in her new book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, you have to give up control if you want to stay in command.

To be in command these days, you can’t just lean forward and act—if you expect people to follow you. Instead you first need to lean back, listen and observe. Be curious. Show humility. Acknowledge you don’t have all the answers.

Granted, it’s hard to give up control, especially for Baby Boomers and Traditionalists who used to be able to control the messages. But the genie is out of the bottle and won’t ever go back.

Instead, you need to curate conversations. Then you can lean in and guide and shape the conversations to share your point of view. At the same time, you’ve got to be sure your actions and words are consistent. For example, if you’re dissuading employees from using the word “Chevy,” you don’t want to be caught humming American Pie.

Once you gain insights, you can build relationships and trust. From there you can influence and collaborate to get things done.

Just be careful not to bark too many commands along the way. Even your dog may stop listening to you.

What’s your experience?

Liz, the Goober Girl

Baseball and big oil have been very good to me, to paraphrase the late baseball great Roberto Clemente. Baseball and oil both run in my blood.

My first job was hawking peanuts, popcorn and crackerjacks at Tulsa Oiler Park, home of the Triple A affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals. As the first female vendor dubbed “Goober Girl,” I broke the gender barrier back when Tulsa, Oklahoma was still the “oil capital of the world” and teenage girls babysat to make money.

My first professional communications job was a paid internship in the Public and Government Affairs Department of Amoco, now part of BP, in its Chicago headquarters. Over the course of two academic years in college and one summer, I served as the assistant editor and writer for four publications.

So recent events—the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the imperfect perfect baseball game—have captivated me, especially their juxtaposition. They’ve also illustrated that men who play games can be better role models and leaders than captains of industry.

What more can be said about BP CEO Tony Hayward with his tin ear and loose lips who said he would like his life back? (By the way, where are the members of the BP Board of Directors? What are they thinking and doing?)

Now contrast the BP executive’s words and actions with Jim Joyce, the established baseball umpire who blew the most important call of his career. He immediately apologized to Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga for calling the hitter safe at first base, which robbed the young pitcher of a perfect game. Joyce also apologized to the Tiger’s manager and the fans.

Granted, the bad baseball call took place in the “toy store of life,” as one of my professors called sports. The adverse impact of the call is an almost invisible asterisk compared with the economic, environmental, and emotional damage the BP oil spill has inflicted.

Yet, this baseball botch can teach business three key lessons about dealing with crises, especially crisis communications.

1. Be fast. Once Joyce watched the videotape and saw that he missed the call, he took responsibility immediately. He not only apologized to the pitcher in the Tigers clubhouse, but he also expressed his regrets to the media. Joyce didn’t wait for others to tell him to act like an adult, be responsible, and move quickly.

2. Care about others. By taking immediate responsibility, apologizing, and showing concern for Galarraga and his teammates, Joyce demonstrated that he was the player in this drama, not the focal point. Galarraga was the victim of Joyce’s bad call. Rather than wallow in self-pity, Joyce stepped forward to show that it’s dignified to admit a mistake, show vulnerability and express sincere interest in others.

3. Get back in the game. The very next day Joyce worked as home plate umpire. He decided to work rather than take the day off as he was offered. By being in close proximity to the players and coaches, he demonstrated respect, integrity, and responsibility.

These were simple, yet extremely powerful, significant and memorable actions. They also provide a teachable moment for the rest of us.

In both the substance and manner of his communication, Joyce was direct, respectful, and responsible. This is LEAN COMMUNICATIONS™ in principle and in action.

What do you think?

First the preaching: “Conversations are the key to communication!” “We all need to work on building stronger relationships.” “Leaders need to be chief learners and listeners.”

Several speakers hammered home these points at conferences I’ve recently attended.

Next the practice: For the most part, the bully pulpit most of them used was the traditional stage or front of the room. Their session format was conventional too. They generally spoke for 58 minutes and left the last two minutes for questions and answers.

Now the comparison. Is it just me or is this contradictory? If you’re speaking 97% of your allocated time, you’re not conversing. And you’re certainly not listening to those in the room.

Also, from a LEAN COMMUNICATIONS and traditional lean perspective, you’re not practicing the important principles of coaching and guiding others as they act.

These recent events reminded me of work experiences I had early on in my career—unique situations that influence me still today.

As a college freshman at Northwestern University, I worked as a research assistant for a social psychology professor, Dr. Philip Brickman. Phil—as everyone called him—hated to speak to groups, including classrooms.

So long before anyone was talking about “edutainment,” Phil designed his classes to be interactive. Gone was the “expert/idiot” model with the authority figure at the front of the class. Also eliminated was any pressure for him to perform.

Instead, he recruited graduate students and upperclassmen to serve as facilitators to help him lead small group discussions in class.

Not surprisingly, students rated him one of the best professors. And his classes were always full.

His office was also always lively, with students and professors stopping by to participate in yet another research project, chat with one another, or check on the latest events happening in the department.

One of those research projects was the groundbreaking “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?” which was one of the first studies about happiness.

My role was minor, primarily reading and coding interview comments, photocopying and stapling and re-stapling as necessary. (Straight corners were a must!) Yet, what a heady experience to be a team member! 

Alas, the joy didn’t last. Phil got what he thought was a better job offer and moved to another university. However, the new job was more than teaching. He also served as the director of a research institute, which required him to speak in front of groups. A few years later, at the age of 39, he committed suicide.

When I heard the news, I was overcome with sadness. To this day, I think of him often, thankful for all the contributions he made yet wistful about what could have been.

He and his work influenced me in so many ways. Early on, I experienced the value of interactivity, which is why I always build some type of involvement in my presentations. And, I respect the importance of being true to yourself. Yes, we should push ourselves to develop, but how far should we travel outside of our comfort zone? 

Thanks, Phil. I’ll never forget you. And I’ll continue to promote the value of precise stapling (even now with staple-less staplers as pictured above), involvement, and happiness.

Are you able to practice what you preach? 

Silent Sugarcoated Moose on the loose

Who knew sugarcoating could be so controversial? My guest blog post “Stamp Out Sugarcoating” for Mark Graban elicited several comments from readers who approved of sugarcoating messages.

“Call me a Mary Poppins fan,” one reader wrote, “A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down. Without a little sugar, these letters risk coming off cold and harsh. However, don’t pour the whole sugar bag into it which tastes just as bad. Balance and moderation is best.”

When you sugarcoat communication though, you’re superficially making something attractive or palatable. That’s inauthentic, which can cause more problems than the proverbial putting lipstick on a pig.

As the creator of the Silent, Sugarcoated Moose® as well as being The LEAN COMMUNICATOR™, I respectfully disagree with sugarcoating communication and am saying so. The Silent, Sugarcoated Moose®  is a mutated species of the “moose on the table” or the “elephant in the room.” Everyone sees and knows about the moose but no one says anything. And everyone continues to ignore it when others try to put a positive spin on negative news. Or, they attempt to silence the moose and everything around it, which feeds the rumor mill and starts to hurt productivity, relationships and trust.

Straight talk that’s not sweet or sour is the way to go. It’s direct, clear and responsible. And as a result, it shows respect. All solid LEAN COMMUNICATIONS™ principles.

Three ways to practice straight talk are:

1. Share the facts. Don’t hide them. For instance, a couple of clients recently wanted to hide the truth or at least not showcase it. One of them has higher IT project costs than the industry average. The other has higher invoice processing costs than the industry average.  Both companies are taking actions to reduce their costs over time. And both were hesitant about saying that their current costs are above what their competitors are paying. Yet, people will understand the need to get costs in line and more than likely will support the required actions to do so.

2. Explain diplomatically. Don’t use flowery language that’s a backhanded criticism when you give your rationale. Instead, clarify the circumstances you’re now in. For example, in these client situations, the companies did some benchmarking and discovered their costs were out of line with what other companies are spending, which makes them less competitive. Now that they know this, they’re going to take some action. That sounds sensible.

And certainly don’t do what a board chairman wanted to do: Declare a board member “Out of order!” for trying to introduce a new business item at the wrong time. The chair could have been more respectful and discreet by asking the board member to wait until an appropriate time to talk.

3. Be timely. Don’t avoid sharing the information or bringing up a difficult issue.  What you ignore becomes more. As the situation festers, you’ll get more irritated and you’ll run the risk of making things even worse. So set aside time sooner than later to deal with the issue. Remember, the longer the Silent, Sugarcoated Moose® stays around, the stinkier he gets, which can hurt your reputation and credibility.

So what do you think? Whether you’re in favor of sugarcoating or not, just dish it to me straight.

Meet a lean groupie. I love to learn and share experiences that I hope will benefit others. The current learnings? Tips for putting on a great conference plus some emerging themes from the lean community—all from the perspective of this LEAN COMMUNICATOR™.

For the fourth March in a row, I traveled to the annual Lean Transformation Summit, sponsored by The Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI). This year, I joined a sold-out crowd of 355 LEAN thinkers (150 were repeaters like me) from 20 countries.

As usual, LEI conducted a commendable conference. The speakers were insightful. We had sufficient breakout time and receptions to meet participants. And LEI continues to pay attention to important conference details: meeting format and logistics.

The changes in this year’s Summit reflect the new times we live in. The swag from past years was gone. LEI had set our expectations for this in advance by reducing this year’s conference fee plus providing discounts for early registration and returning participants. (Very thoughtful!) We did get our own copy of the Womack on Lean Management DVD.

The conference was also greener. LEI also eliminated the conference carrying case filled with paper. Instead, we received a spiral notepad with the outside back cover doubling as the program agenda. (Very clever!) We had the option of downloading the conference materials to our laptops or printing them out before we came.

As for themes, these five were prominent this year:

1. Little is the new big thing. By focusing on small improvements, you can get traction, gain momentum and start to build up to bigger, lasting change. (The new book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, also advocates starting small. The Heath brothers further suggest finding the “bright spots”—those who are having initial success with the change—and figuring out how to replicate their actions elsewhere in the organization or community.)
2. Continuous improvement is crucial. Several speakers spoke almost exclusively about their commitment to continuous improvement and their ensuing successes. By accumulating improvements, you again are able to sustain your actions and reduce deterioration rates. (The acronym “CI” was tossed around a lot, which is jargon to most everyone outside of the conference room.)
3. Sustainability is key too. Stay committed to what you’re doing and get better at it, rather than trading it for a new shiny object or program, during these tough economic times. This theme has been evident in my work for awhile too. For example, the CEO of one of my client’s advised him and his communication team: Go deep, not broad. No new programs or initiatives for awhile. Let’s master and sustain the ones we’re now working on.
4. Reflection time is underused and underrated. Taking time to reflect will result in a positive payback. In our fast-paced work environment, we tend to concentrate more on doing than thinking, especially reflecting on our past experiences. Yet, taking time to review our past actions can bring out valuable insights that can give us good guidance. For example, one speaker talked about examining past initiatives that started every time a new CEO took office. When he became CEO he decided to stick with ongoing efforts rather than start something new, especially since the organization had just started to reap benefits from the current effort.
5. Personal confessions are now part of some lean speakers’ repertoire. Some made an emotional connection with the participants by sharing some personal tidbits with us, which also was a refreshing change. Who knew one lean leader prefers Hondas over Toyotas, even before the Toyota recalls?

As for communication learnings from the Summit, read the guest post I wrote for Mark Graban’s www.leanblog.org, Expanding Horizons of Communication . For my observations from last year’s Summit, check out Lean Transformation Summit Leads by Example.

Meanwhile, it’s back to work for me as I don’t know what else is expected of a lean groupie. Any ideas?

Photo by James Sarmiento

Content may be king, but the room in which you experience that content matters.

If you doubt that, you haven’t met a bad room situation. Or, you haven’t asked others their opinion about meeting logistics—or listened when they said something.

Believe me, people express their opinions about meeting logistics. For about 18 months, I regularly analyzed feedback results from quarterly town hall meetings, among other things, for an organization as part of its company-wide standardized yet decentralized town hall program.

At the end of each meeting, participants were asked to complete a paper survey that was in their chair when they arrived at the meeting. The results were consistent—at least 75% complied with the request and the participants said similar things.

Meeting participants gave the highest ratings to the speakers, the opportunity to ask questions, the responses to questions, and topics about how the company was doing, especially about recent successes.

The lowest rated items? The meeting room and all the logistics. Room was too small or too big. Room temperature was too hot or too cold or too stuffy. Uncomfortable chairs. Poor audio. Poor sight lines. Video screen too small. No refreshments. Unhealthy refreshments. Too many apples and oranges and not enough cookies. Not enough diet sodas.

True, one person’s ideal setting is another person’s hell—especially for room temperature. But in between heaven and hell is a lot of space that you and meeting planners can work.

As the strategic meeting designer Mary Boone says, the devil is in the details when it comes to successful meetings. This means meeting execution can trump meeting design. Mary suggests working with meeting professionals in your organization. Or if you don’t have any, consult with a credentialed meeting professional.

Even I who know better sometimes get tripped up by bad room design and arrangements for larger meetings (20 people and more). This can happen when groups for whom I speak want to take the easy way out. In a sense, the speakers become interchangeable as they rotate through a basic room design.

In these situations, the groups believe they can save time and money by using use one room design for an entire conference or day. But they sacrifice overall meeting ROI because the discomfort or inappropriateness of the meeting room subtracts from the value of the meeting content.

What if you can’t get a meeting professional or wave a magic wand and get the best logistics? Try these five tips:

1. Use rounds. Rounds—small tables that sit six to eight—give you more flexibility than theater or classroom style assuming you want to encourage networking and interactivity among participants. Yes, if you’re using a projector for some of the meeting, people will have to adjust their chairs so they can see the screen, but they’ll manage. And if you can’t get rounds, encourage everyone to form small circles with their chairs for the interactive sessions. (Try to avoid the classroom setting in the photo.)

2. Take a short break at least every 90 minutes when you’re meeting for more than two hours. Even if you just have people stand or move about, you’ll shake things up. Time outs help everyone re-focus on the content rather than the lousy meeting conditions.

3. Offer refreshments. Food and drink can take peoples’ minds off of bad meeting conditions too. Even a bag of candy provides relief.

4. Bring supplies. Make sure you have pens or pencils, paper, tape, marking pens and anything else you think you’ll need. (As an aside, with the growing popularity of smart phones, I’ve noticed that some people have stopped carrying pens and paper with them. So if you want them to write something you’ll need to furnish the instrument.)

5. Appoint a door monitor. This individual can decide whether the door should be open or closed depending on foot traffic, noise levels and temperatures and then act. That way, the individuals sitting near the door can concentrate more on the meeting rather than all the commotion around the coming and goings. Plus you’ll avoid having people tripping all over one other to do the duty, or the opposite in which no one takes control.

And always ask your meeting participants for their feedback. It’s their meeting too and they’ll have some helpful insights on what worked well and what could be improved for next time.

What do you do to make potentially bad meeting situations more tolerable?

Photo by Ray Dravesky

From morning to night, if you’re like most workers, you’re looking down and in to do your job.

You need to take a break every now and then to look up and out.

That’s the advice Peter Pande, President of Pivotal Resources, gave a group of process owners a few years ago.

He emphasized that while each process owner needs to know his or her own process inside and out, they also must be knowledgeable about how their process connects with all the other processes in the value stream. The processes must coordinate tightly to create seamless, end-to-end integration. That’s what delivers value to customers.

Pete’s suggestion applies to a multitude of people these days, doing all sorts of jobs. Yet, many seem not only to be looking down and in, but they also have their heads on a constant downward tilt. And while the bowed heads might not initially seem to have an adverse impact on effective LEAN COMMUNICATIONS™ practices, your communications–and customer service–can suffer. For example, consider:

• The restaurant hostess who acts more interested in texting a message on her iPhone than greeting customers who enter the restaurant.
• The individuals at bus and train stops who are reading their emails on their cell phones or laptops.
• The concierge at the hotel who appears engrossed in his thoughts while conducting an online search.

What are they—and you—missing by not looking up and out at their surroundings?

Especially for those in a service role, they are losing out on opportunities to:

1. Make a connection with another person, which could be of mutual benefit.
2. Be available and anticipate needs of a potential customer.
3. Provide service to customers appearing before them.

Even though I enjoy looking up and out, I have to admit I got so engrossed in a couple of projects this past fall that I developed tunnel vision. I neglected to do my regular check-ins with some long-established contacts of mine.

So I was totally surprised—and embarrassed—when I received a holiday card from an individual who wrote that she had left her job three months earlier. I felt like I had fallen asleep at the switch. My behavior wasn’t as bad as texting while driving—as one of my taxicab drivers started to do. But I had missed out on helping her during a transition and providing something of value.

Plus, taking a break to glance around you is healthy. You rest your eyes, relieve stress, and rejuvenate yourself.

Pierre Khawand, the productivity evangelist of People-OntheGo, says distance creates clarity and perspective, which helps us be more productive. I believe this distance also can help us be better LEAN Communicators too.

Are you looking up and out often enough?

And if you’re responsible for leading or managing service workers, are you serving as a proper role model? Are you guiding them to be more observant of customers? Also, are you rewarding them for serving customers as well as taking the long, broad view?

This required course—coupled with other activities— allowed me to renew my certification. So for the next six years, I continue to be a Professional Registered Parliamentarian® .

The course was taxing because it seemed so out of touch for these times. Rather than bore non-parliamentarians (which is almost everyone) with my reasoning, I’m sharing some learnings that you can adapt to your training. (Be warned: My examples are from this recent experience as I still want to get them out of my system.)   

My three tips for introducing lean and LEAN Communications™ principles to your training are:

1. Embrace Google and other search engines.  If you can ‘Google’ a topic, think twice about teaching it. Or at least don’t waste precious time in a classroom reciting and rehashing black and white information that you can easily look up.  Instead, especially when you’ve got a group of skilled individuals, use the time to discuss shades of gray, other nuances and sticky ethical issues.  To paraphrase Marilyn Moats Kennedy, the Paul Revere of workplace trends, “Talk about things you can’t find on Google.”

2. Respect diversity of thoughts and actions. Your students will probably respect you in return, as long as you don’t require them to mimic you, especially regarding issues of style versus substance. For example, one of my teachers deducted points in a homework assignment for an action that to me is personal preference. She dinged me for signing a letter “Liz” instead of my official name, Elizabeth Guthridge, Professional Registered Parliamentarian®. I’ve been signing “Liz” in my professional correspondence my entire career to signify that I’m friend, not foe.

3. Bring the outside in. Acknowledge what’s going on in the outside world, rather than just in your specialized area. The scenarios we worked with in this class were so far removed from my client experiences that I felt like I was back in high school when I started studying Robert’s Rules. (Believe it or not, I competed in parliamentary procedure events through FBLA [Future Business Leaders of America] on the state and national level.)    

My clients don’t live and die by Robert’s Rules. They’re more interested in getting things done, keeping the peace, and then dealing with next week’s problems, next quarter’s issues and next year’s challenges. Organizations generally follow Robert’s Rules because their bylaws demand it, but they’d probably be happier with Alice Cochran’s approach, Roberta’s Rules of Order: Sail Through Meetings for Stellar Results Without the Gavel.

Over the years, I’ve successfully learned to go where my clients are rather than force fit them into Robert’s Rules or anything else for that matter.

And that, dear readers, is one of the most important principles of lean and LEAN Communications™. You meet customer requirements, always ensuring that you’re adding value. Although my recent teachers didn’t seem to demonstrate this very well, students of all ages are customers too.