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Category Archives: Concentrating effort

Multiply Your Impact

26 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by Jim Lucas in Concentrating effort, Contribution, Effectiveness, leadership, Management

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Leaderhip, management, Teams

golden-state-warriors-strength-in-numbers-wallpaper-4

Who gets promoted at your company? Who are your managers and what kind of performance did they demonstrate to earn their positions? Who deserves to have people “under them”?

People who are exceptional at getting things done, through their own direct effort, are often the first to earn promotions. As they begin to supervise, manage, and ultimately lead people in their organizations they soon learn:

What got you here won’t get you there.

In other words, the skills an excellent individual possesses are just the beginning of what it takes to be even an adequate manager and leader. Instead of promoting our best “doers” we need to ask:

Are you interested in learning how to achieve results indirectly—through other people?

The answer to this question must be a resounding, “yes.” Effective managers and leaders must first possess the desire to multiply their impact beyond what they were able to accomplish on their own. If they don’t want to make a greater impact, they will never acquire the necessary skills to lead and manage. They will simply set about doing their new job just like they did their old one, which often creates a confusing mash up of power and influence instead of entire groups of people working to create something greater than themselves.

As owners, leaders, and executives we also have to ask ourselves a question:

Are we ready to present the newly promoted with the knowledge and training to help them build the skills they’ll need to make the transition from super achiever to supervisor, manager, and future leader?

If our answer is yes, then here is what I believe is the underpinning of everything to do with mobilizing a group who wants to multiply its impact beyond what any one individual could achieve alone.

Inspire. As leaders our job is to inspire our team with a desirable future outcome. A vivid description that inspires our team to pool our individual efforts for the benefit of our customers, ourselves, our company—and even society—is our first task.

Buy-in. Once we paint a vision of the destination, our next objective is to earn the buy-in of each team member. Admittedly, this can be a detailed and, perhaps, messy step but it’s critical to get everyone “on board.” Sometimes that means some give-and-take or for some members to suspend their disbelief for a while.

Share. At this point average leaders will emphasize “how” they suggest “what” the team should do to get started. Some, falling back on their old skills as an individual doer, will even try to detail every step of the way. To be sure, we leaders have good ideas, but if we did our jobs correctly in hiring the people on our teams, what we need to share with our people is “why” we are setting about a task and then let them take on the “how’s” and the “what’s.” After all, that’s why we hired them, yes?

Own. The holy grail of mobilizing a group is when our teams move beyond buy-in and take an ownership position in our vision. That doesn’t mean mutiny or coopting our vision. It means their commitment to our vision is as strong as our own. It can be scary when someone else owns “your idea” with you but it’s well worth the emotional risk. Rest assured that’s what it takes to multiply your impact.

Communication Plan

05 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by Jim Lucas in Concentrating effort, Continuous improvement, Effectiveness, leadership, Management, Results

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communication, management, one-on-ones, planning

marketing-communication-vector_23-2147501099

In an earlier post we explored the definitions of Leadership, Management, and People Skills. Among all the people skills, e.g., self-control, social awareness, and problem solving; communication is by far the most important. After all, what good is a leader, manager, or employee if s/he can’t convey basic information? As much as we may try we can’t read each other’s minds. That’s why communication is #1.

Information is the lifeblood of your organization. If information isn’t flowing in a regular, efficient, and predictable way you are starving your team of the very thing they need to adopt your values, purpose, and vision as their professional cause.

Here is a simple and effective way to set up communication within your organization.

Yearly. Once a year host a celebration for the entire team. Make it all about the goals you’ve achieved together, the goals and priorities for the new year, and a time to strengthen your emotional bonds. Whether your celebration feels like a business function or a flat-out party is up to you.

Quarterly. Every three months bring the team together in a business or semi-business atmosphere to discuss this year’s progress toward your goals and priorities—including financials. Spend 2-5 hours together sharing information, improving your plans, and figuring out how to do things better. Document your take-aways.

Monthly. This is the classic rhythm to conduct one-on-ones. It’s also the best time to share financial, operational, personnel, and educational details. Celebrate outstanding performance. Think: client champion of the month and major projects completed, as well as upcoming promotional events, etc.

Weekly. Start every week with 45-60 minutes of group discussion about your book, employee schedules, promotions/events beginning or ending, and news that affects everyone. It’s hard to get the whole crew together once a week so consider doing a conference call using a free call-in service.

Daily. Start everyday with a team huddle. Talk about your book, who’s working, and share any last-minute reminders. Use the daily huddle to help the whole team get into their client service mindsets. Feedback on performance should happen daily—as close to the example as possible. All good, of course.

Constantly. It used to be the only way to post timely information was on a white board. Use technology to communicate in real time, make documents available to anyone day or night, or start a new discussion. Dropbox and Google Drive are great for storing and sharing documents. Consider how social media like Facebook Groups and messaging apps can help with real time communication.

Active Listening

04 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by Jim Lucas in Concentrating effort, Contribution, leadership, Management, Shared values

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Listening, management, People Skills

Listening-6

Leaders and managers want to be heard, understood, and to be part of our communities just like anyone else. We appreciate it when people listen to our ideas and try to connect with us because it makes us feel good. That alone should be enough to motivate us to listen and try to understand others. As leaders and managers we often give ourselves too much permission to talk when we should be reminding ourselves to listen.

We always need to model the behavior we expect to see in our organizations. Given that, we have a special obligation to listen and to listen well. Here is a quick summary of the key “active listening” skills we should demonstrate in our personal and professional lives.

  • Attention/Focus. Devote your attention to the other person. Find a place that allows you to do that.
  • Interest. Take a true interest in the person and what s/he is saying. This isn’t a good time to go through the motions.
  • Take Time. Set aside time to listen instead of trying to multi-task. Schedule private appointments when necessary to ensure you have enough time.
  • Body Language. Listen to words, posture, gestures, and tone of voice. Provide plenty of eye contact and use all your senses to understand the other person.
  • Validate. Reassure the speaker that you see their point of view. Even if you don’t yet agree, it’s important you validate his or her point of view.
  • Repeat/Clarify. Repeat what you heard in your own words. “So what I hear you saying is….” is not just a cliché. It allows you to explain what you heard and allows the speaker to verify s/he got her message across.
  • Ask clarifying questions. Rather than interrogating your partner, ask her or him some clarifying questions to solidify your understanding. For example: “When you said (blank) could you clarify what you meant?” “Could you say that a different way so I make sure I understand?” “I’m not sure I understand. Could you go over (blank) again with me?”
  • Feelings. When it’s appropriate, probe for feelings. Communication is not only about what a person thinks. It’s also about how s/he feels about what s/he thinks.
  • Counter Argument. Do not waste your listening time planning what to say. Sit tight. Let the speaker finish and then interact with him or her. Save your counter arguments—if any—until you’re certain you understand the other party.

Thanks for listening. Now, what did you hear and how will you put it into action?

Leadership is a Verb

03 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by Jim Lucas in Concentrating effort, Contribution, Effectiveness, leadership, Management, Results

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Leaderhip, management, Vision

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I searched amazon.com for “books on leadership” and it returned 21,000+ hits. I googled “leadership seminars” and received 76 million+ results.

Apparently, people buy products and services with the word “leadership” in them. It’s a lot like how the word “natural” or the word “organic” helps companies sell food (and haircare products). We know that we want those things even if we’re not precisely sure what they are.

Many of my clients struggle to develop a shared understanding of what leaders are supposed to do versus what managers are supposed to do. Here is how I define these terms simply and usefully. Please give this some consideration—it may save you a lot of reading!

MANAGEMENT

The manager’s job is to create results. When J. B. Say defined management in 1767 he said, “The manager is responsible for directing vision and resources toward greater results.” Of course, he’s talking about one person’s impact (a manager) on more than one other person (employees) in an organization.

LEADERSHIP

The leader’s job is to create priorities and then stimulate individuals and groups to take action. This definition tells us that “leader” is not a noun it’s a verb. In other words, a leader is not a special type of person. She or he engages in a special type of action, that is, pointing others in the right direction and stimulating them to pursue a certain end.

PEOPLE SKILLS

The ability to communicate, interact, and connect with individuals and groups. We all need people skills regardless if we are managers, a leaders, or followers.

STYLE

Leaders and Managers can do their jobs, using different styles, and almost any style can be successful. Prevalent misconceptions are that successful leaders have a particular style (e.g., they are charismatic) and that managers have a particular style (e.g., they are boring). The truth is that any style can work—as long as the person has the people skills to get others to work toward the organization’s vision, mission, and goals.

One Delightful Thing

21 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by Jim Lucas in Branding, Concentrating effort, Customer Experience, Customers, Innovation, Retail

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Customer Experience, customer satisfaction, Innovation

NewHorizonsPlutoCharon-1-582x753
Around 500 BC a Greek philosopher named Heraclitus said, “Everything changes and nothing stands still.” Today, we are more likely to hear, “The only constant is change,” and feel like it’s a new idea. The truth is that change has always been, and always will be, regardless when we discover it.

When Henry Ford introduced the automobile he was amused by the idea that people really only wanted faster horses. When your grandmother drank coffee she was, at most, looking for cream and sugar not Butterbeer Frappuccinos from the Starbucks Secret Menu. When the Wright Brothers invented flight they didn’t quite imagine the International Space Station.

Recently, I attended Raylon’s 14th annual Art of Business symposium where I caught Josh Hafetz’ talk. Josh is the 3rd generation President of Raylon Corporation and he made a compelling argument. Like hair that is always growing, salon owners and managers must constantly grow, adapt, and remain relevant. Josh cited several very real examples of changes that are happening—right now—and why many of these changes cause salon professional product sales to remain flat, put pressure on salon service pricing, result in fewer appointments per year, and impact the loyalty of our clients to our salons.

After following Josh on a visual tour of the new ways our clients obtain information on beauty and style (social media, YouTube beauty tutorials, and mass-customization of consumer beauty products) another time-tested truism came to mind.

Consumer expectations are always growing.

The Kano Model (Google it) is a trendy way to understand changing consumer expectations but it too is based on an age-old truth. In a nutshell, what Kano says is this. There are three kinds of things consumers want at all times from any business:

  • Basic things: For example, A salon that is open, furnished, clean, with plenty of parking.
  • Expected things: Great haircuts, artistic hair color, and nice blowouts.
  • Delightful things: Complimentary finishing touches, outrageously good consultations, luxurious washbowl experiences, etc.

Kano also points out that, over time, things that were once “delightful” eventually become “expected,” and ultimately “basic.” This creates one of two situations for every salon owner and manager A) tomorrow we invent something new and delightful, or B) we stop inventing and start going stale.

This presents each of us with a bold and never-ending challenge: Change or go stale. Innovate or die!

I encourage you to sit down tonight, with at least one other person on your team, and list out all the products, services, and experiences your salon provides. Sort your list into Basic, Expected, and Delightful. Then look at your list and push one thing from Expected into Basic. Push one Delightful into Expected.

And then invent one new Delightful thing

Instant MBA

19 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by Jim Lucas in Branding, Concentrating effort, Customers, Management, Results, Shared values

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Branding, management, MBA

Printing Money
Every new salon is created with a “License to print money,” because the money making potential in our industry is virtually unlimited. To use your “license,” you need an activation key but only 5-10% of all salons know how to obtain it. What is this secret activation key? It is:

Knowing the difference between running your salon and managing your salon.

Here is how you can start managing your salon today.

Create a Customer

Every institution must create certain benefits. The role of business—your business—is to create a customer. No matter if you’re a creative, a geek, a hipster, or just a regular person, your only concern at work is delivering what your customers value. Everything else is either secondary or an outright distraction.

Communicate Your Vision

Your first priority as a leader is to constantly communicate and reinforce the values, purpose, and vision of your salon. The time you currently spend on everything else must come after you describe what you stand for, why you’re here, and the future you are creating.

Develop a Shared Understanding

If there is a trick between Running Your Salon and Managing Your Salon it is to create a shift in thinking from “I” to “We.” No one is exempt from this rule of management. If effort in your salon is individual, energies will be scattered. When effort is concentrated you will make a powerful impact together.

Understand Your Guests

Recognizing is not understanding. Know specifics for every guest. Name, age, significant other, children, visit frequency, likes/dislikes, recent issues or triumphs, satisfaction/trust level, income, job, upbringing, etc. To create a customer you must know who they are and why they want what they want.

Write Job Descriptions

Describe every job in writing and include at least: Job Title, Results, Measures, and Behaviors. Provide performance feedback on these topics during every one-on-one before addressing anything else.

Hire Good People

In addition to skill, talent, and artistic ability you need to identify, select, and retain good people. “Good” people have solid values, a strong work ethic, and good intentions. Remember, it is far easier to teach a good person how to be a better hairdresser than to teach a better hairdresser how to be a good person.

Train as Well as Educate

Continuing education is proven for success in our industry. What 90% of salon owners overlook is training employees to succeed in living out their values, sharing a common purpose, and creating a better future together through service to their guests. Model this behavior and communicate it too.

 

Art, Beauty, Love

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by Jim Lucas in Concentrating effort, Continuous improvement, Contribution, Customer Experience, Customers, Developing talent, Results

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

motivation, passion, self-control, self-improvement

claude-monet-artist-s-garden-at-giverny

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
-Aristotle

As part of The Beacon Program at #cosmoprofna you just experienced two days of what it feels like to be considered the future of our industry. Even though I was only privileged to sit in on a couple hours of your experience, the goodwill and concentrated effort of your PBA hosts, facilitator Geno Stampora, and speakers such as Jay Williams, showed me people putting everything they have into giving you a personal head start. When Geno shares his “Words to Live By,” or when Jay talks about “Significance, self-worth, and sense of belonging,” what you’re witnessing are two people doing their utter best to gift you a lifetime of experience so you can achieve your own riches, potential, and happiness.

With that in mind, this is what keeps coming back to me as I consider you and your bright futures.

ART

For many, art is the enduring nuclear reactor inside your heart that provides the endless source of energy and passion for our business. As you create your journey, stay closely connected to your artistic self. When people say, “Motivation and passion come from within,” accept it as an invitation to renew your connection to your art.

BEAUTY

It is useful to ask yourself, “What business am I in?” Some answer, “hair,” some will say “beauty,” and others feel it is, “The people business.” Regardless, for convenience we end up calling it the beauty business. Even though it does change, sometimes change comes slowly—too slowly in fact. Friends behind the chair were recently telling me about how in Europe hairdressers are considered “professionals” while here in the U.S. not so much. After much reflection, I think professionalism, motivation, and passion are cousins that come from the same place—inside each one of us. So, if you want to be seen as a professional, choose a professional role model and act like her until you become one too.

LOVE

I have enormous respect for how difficult it must be to be your absolute best for every client, every day, every month, year-in-and-year out. We are all human beings and we all get depleted. We have ups and downs and some of us even get burned out. Believe me when I tell you that clients can sense when you’re not feeling your best and it impacts their mood and experience in your salon and in your chair—and maybe the rest of their day. We each have to find our own little happy place where we go to get our minds right before seeing our next client. If you haven’t found yours yet, I humbly suggest love is the answer. If you can pause to love yourself, and see something to love in each one of your clients, you’ll be on your way to being your best for every client every time.

SO WHAT?

My hope is that among these 500+ words you take-away just three and let them run as a little script inside your head: Art, Beauty, Love. That’s all you really need to remember in order to succeed in your new, meaningful, and lucrative career.

Going too Far

03 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by Jim Lucas in Concentrating effort, Contribution, Developing talent, Effectiveness, Management, Shared values

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Mae West, management, organizations, restraint, results, self-control

circa 1933:  American film actress & sex symbol, Mae West (1892 - 1980).  (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

I like restraint, if it doesn’t go too far. Mae West

In my business experience, I haven’t met (m)any people who learned at home—or at school—how businesses essentially work or how to behave within an organization. Like other roles in our lives, mother, daughter, friend, spouse, etc., we learn by experience and figure things out by the seat of our pants.

In “What is Management?” I proposed the basis of how businesses work. I encourage you to come back to these 11 bullet points until they are second-nature. We spend so much of our time working in organizations while actually ignoring the context of business and its requirements of us as leaders, managers, and employees.

My clients often ask for my input on difficult employee situations that inevitably occur. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t begin my response by first reflecting on “How Business Works.” As I listen to situations, clarify goals, and probe for motivations one thing crops up time and time again—the issue of restraint, or self-control.

At a very basic level, organizations simply cannot function unless everyone has achieved some minimum level of maturity. We don’t work well together unless each of us takes responsibility for our own behavior and exercises control over our own urges which may come from any direction; absentmindedness, fear, power, self-image, control, and so on.

Management has a reasonable expectation that employees will conduct themselves responsibly, with restraint, and even professionally. Employees must take responsibility for their role at work, recognizing its basic requirements, the same way they take responsibility in their roles as mother, daughter, friend, and spouse.

Employees have a reasonable expectation that Management will conduct themselves responsibly, with restraint, and to “do” management instead of just tasks. It is on them to provide leadership, goals, clear communication, and constantly state and reiterate the importance of values, purpose, and the company’s vision. Management must take responsibility for their role in the organization and not confuse it with power, control, micromanaging, dismissiveness, and the like.

Mae West was quite a character. For organizations to excel what we need is a lot of character.

What is Management?

25 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by Jim Lucas in Branding, Concentrating effort, Continuous improvement, Contribution, Customers, Developing talent, Effectiveness, Management, Results, Shared values

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executive, leaders, leadership, management

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Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
Peter F. Drucker

Because few of us have had bosses who were trained managers, and because few of us have received specialized training in management, we tend to think management is some kind of gut-feel thing. In fact, there is much that is known about management as it has been defined, studied, and systematically improved over the past century. Management is endlessly fascinating and, at the same time, it is not rocket science. For our mutual benefit, and so we have a shorthand way of understanding what we’re talking about when we say “management,” here it is on one page. Again, thanks and props to Mr. Drucker.

ROLE OF BUSINESS

To create a customer.

ROLE OF PROFIT

To serve as validation that customer needs are being met.

ROLE OF THE EXECUTIVE/LEADER

To know the Purpose, Vision, and Values of an organization and to constantly communicate them.

ROLE OF THE MANAGER

To make our work productive and to help workers achieve results.

There is a lot of study and discussion about how our memory works. Authors such as Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Kahneman talk about the concept of “The availability heuristic.” Availability describes what’s happening when, “Something just ‘pops’ into our heads.” In the hustle-bustle of daily management, how we respond to (or lead) a situation is often determined by what pops into our heads. The results can be pretty random. Instead, I ask you to train your memory until the following model of how business works pops into your head. That will help you put things into perspective, help you lead for results, and solve situations in more effective ways. For every business situation you face it’s far better to rely on this model than to just wing it.

HOW BUSINESS “WORKS”

  • There is a customer need.
  • There is a better idea to satisfy the customer need.
  • Values, Purpose, and Vision concentrate the effort of multiple people.
  • An organization is formed to divide the work.
  • Each job is described so its contribution is clear.
  • People who share in the Values, Purpose, and Vision are hired.
  • Employees use self-control and contribution to guide the work they do and how they do it.
  • Customers are satisfied.
  • The business earns revenue, and eventually profit, as validation of its success.
  • The business shares their monetary and other success with employees.
  • The business invests so that meeting customer needs can continue.

The Power of the Branding Framework

23 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by Jim Lucas in Branding, Concentrating effort, Management, Shared values

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Branding, Branding Framework, management

Framework
A branding framework, “brand DNA,” or “brand book,” is essential knowledge about who we are as an organization, where we’re headed, and what we stand for. A proper framework invites us to think deeply about our business and then puts us in position to communicate our brand to any audience. Example audiences include internal ones like our employees and managers; external ones like advertising agencies, web developers, and other suppliers; and above all it lets us communicate effectively to our customers, “clients,” or “guests.” A branding framework covers a lot of territory from internal strategic intentions to external marketing messages and, therefore, is one of our organization’s most important documented knowledge.

BRANDING DEFINED

It is very common for people to use the word “branding” and for it to mean different things to different people. It is natural for an advertising agency to say the word branding and for it to mean an ad campaign. To a graphic artist, branding usually means a logo or other symbol they designed. We are going to define branding as something much bigger than an advertisement or a logo. For us, branding is:

The total impact of the organization on our clients and the marketplace.

A brand is composed of hundreds of little fragments of client perception. Our logo, our website, the retail products we carry, the way we dress, our salons’ interiors, the way an individual client was treated by a receptionist and then how she described that to a friend. Every little interaction and every way our clients come into contact with us, our staff and our salons comes together to create an image. It all builds up to create our brand. Stated another way,

Our brand = what we stand for; but not just in our minds: Primarily in the minds of our clients.

WHY A FRAMEWORK?

The most practical reason we want to invest time in creating a branding framework for our organization is because no two people are alike and it is very rare for any two people to describe the same company the same way. The more “technical” reason for our framework is to create continuity in our brand story and to connect all those little fragments of perception in the minds of our clients in just the right way so they choose us instead of our competition. That also goes for attracting talented people who want to come to work for us. They need to know who we are, where we’re going, and what we stand for because we want to work with people who value the same things we value and want to be part of a journey that is bigger than any one of us. Finally, it also goes for those of us currently on the team. We want to make a difference. We want to make our mark. We want all our hard work to mean something and to pay off. Pulling our branding framework together will bring us together in old and new ways.

By taking the time to get clarity about what’s important, to document it in a way that creates a common understanding among us, and then to communicate what we believe to our clients with one voice has the potential to be one of the most powerful things we do.

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