How Will You Live Your Dash?

Every year, about this time, as the new year rushes upon us, I am prompted to pull out a poem I saved a number of years ago titled "How Do You Live Your Dash?" by Linda Ellis.

The poem is about a symbol that appears on most every gravestone defining the period of time a person spent on this earth (1938 - 2010), for example. That period represents the time Don Meredith, who died recently had spent here, on earth. The numbers are not near as important as what the symbol between them, the dash, represents.
That little symbol embodies all the years he had to do good/bad, excel/fail or just "hangout." Each time I consider the "dash" I am reminded not to waste it.
I believe that much is served by humans spending time in reflection about the past and speculation about the future. But there is nothing better than to devote the present to "advancing the envelope," just a little bit everyday. How we use our 'Daily Dashtime" is the most important thing we do everyday. Reflecting on the past or speculating on the future is Okay, but living your dash today the most meaningful and powerful way to impact the future.
Dashtime is somewhat like manna that God provided the Isrealites in the wilderness. If you will recall, God told the them that manna would sustain them but they must gather and eat it everyday. They could not save it up for tomorrow, because it would spoil, unless it was the day before the sabbath and then they could gather extra for the sabbath Well, Dashtime is almost like that, it must be used, productively, today because we do not know what the future holds. Many a life has been sacrificed, opportunity missed, or victory lost because we waited until tomorrow to use our Dashtime.
It is good for me to be reminded that I must pay attention to the present. Do something today to make the world better than you found it when you woke this morning. It matters not how little that something is, if you do something positive everyday, the value accumulates.
So, consider your Dashtime today and everyday. It is a little like paying forward. Thank you Linda Ellis!

Stephen J. Blakesley, Managing Patner, GMS Talent L P ( http://www.gmstalent.com ) is an author and a speaker. His two, most recent books, "The Target-The Secret to Superior Performance" and Strategic Hiring - Tomorrow's Benefits today ( one of the top 50 business books of 2006 according to Business Book Review ) are top resources for business owners, mangers and C-Level executives. Stephen also hosts a radio show on Blog Talk Radio every week on Tuesday @ 5:30 CDT. To join us: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sjb340 Ask us about our Superior Performance Events: sjb@gmstalent.com.

Knock Their Socks Off - Customer Service that Counts

Depending upon whose research you turn to, it can cost anywhere form 6 -10 times more to capture a new client than save an existing one. I don't know about you, but those stats get my attention. The cost of a new customer varies, widely, by industry, but any way you look at it, there is value in keeping as many customers as you can.

It sounds simple enough, but here is the problem. As many as 80 percent of your customers may tell you they are satisfied with you and your product but buy from someone else, anyway.  Whoa, how do you deal with that? If customers say they are satisfied but leave you anyway? I believe there are only two "real choices:" 1.) Don't worry about it and go on doing the same things you have always done, or 2.) Figure out how to be better than good.

You see, there are many good companies out there, delivering good customer service, but they are just like you and you are both throwing money down a "rat hole."

If the money you are spending on customer service is not deterring your customers from leaving you, you are wasting it. What is worse, if you are a businessman or business owner; spending money and not getting the results you want or spending no money and just accepting what comes? I believe that neither of those choices are ideally suited for business success. I encourage you to spend no money, in your business, that does not have a real good chance of putting distance between you and your competition.

Just to make my point, lets talk about the difference between, a satisfied customer and a customer that becomes an Apostle. If the numbers above (80% of satisfied customers leave anyway) are correct, you may want to consider a new customer service strategy. A strategy that creates apostles rather than satisfaction. You might be wondering; What is an apostle, anyway?

An apostle is someone who has seen the product, experienced the benefits of the product, and then tells other people about their experience.  So, if we look at the stages of customer loyalty it flows like this: buy it - like it - buy it again - tell others about the experience - keep buying it.
How valuable would that be? If you can see the value, here are a few things you can do to create more apostles among your customers:

1.    Communicate your commitment to "superior" customer service
2.    Recognize that you are not the one who delivers the service
3.    Give those who do a "track" to run on. Make it easy
4.    Hire people that are service oriented who can solve problems
5.    Give them the authority to serve and solve
6.    Teach everyone the value in listening and how to do it
7.    Give yourself and something extra away to those who have a problem

This is certainly not a comprehensive list. Work on those until you become an expert, then look for something else that will distance you from the competition.

Five Big Mistakes Hiring Managers Make and How to Avoid Them

One would think that the role of ‘Hiring Manager” within an organization would be a coveted role. Possibly it is, for those who are attracted to stress, but often it is shunned and endured. Acting as Hiring Manager is a high risk / high stress position within any organization. The predominate reason behind all the stress and risk is fear. Fear of making a mistake.

Hiring the wrong person for the job or hiring the right person for the wrong job. Often the fear is justified because the task of hiring is often looked upon as a secondary responsibility, and as a result, little or no attention is given to developing competency and expertise in the area. Here are five mistakes that Hiring Managers make that often lead to costly hiring mistakes and how you can avoid them.

1.     Faulty Job Descriptions

2.     Failure to Understand Competencies Driving Performance

3.     Failure to Communicate Expectations

4.     Failure to Assess the Candidate Psychometrically

5.     Faulty Interview Procedures

Help for Hiring

Faulty Job Descriptions: Most job descriptions I see are laden with prerequisites like the “3-5 years experience” or “good work ethics.” They are lengthy and seldom read. I find hiring managers putting job descriptions on electronic job boards that have to be trimmed back because they exceed the word limit imposed by the job board (usually around a 1000 words). Many hiring managers actually believe that applicants read their ads, when all the applicant really does is scan for possible matches to their wants and needs and ignore the rest.

The best Job Descriptions are the ones that get read. If they don’t get read, nothing else counts. We believe job descriptions should seldom exceed 250 words.  Two-hundred and fifty words make a one-page document. There is something magical about a one-page document. Advertisers will tell you that a one-page solicitation letter is more likely to get read than one with multiple pages. The same is true with job descriptions. Keep it short!

The most effective job descriptions are the ones that focus on outcomes and results. Many job descriptions that I see are vague wide ranging like the “operations manager will have excellent management skills.” A job description focused on outcomes and results would say “the operations manager will achieve a gross profit of 40 percent annually.” A description focused on outcomes and results will always be specific and will always be measurable. The benefit is two fold; the person in the job knows what the expectations are and the manager’s supervisor has an accountability tool and a coaching tool to help measure performance. I call this type of job description a Performance Based Job Description. It is a powerful tool in selection and productivity.

Failure to Understand Competencies Driving Performance : Job Fit is all about clearly defining the job and then understanding what attributes would need to be present for a person to be a superior performer in a job. You can not do the later without first clearly defining the job. Once you have defined the job and the outcomes expected you can begin to consider the attributes necessary to achieve the outcomes desired from the job.

A formal process of defining the candidate profile is called the Ideal Candidate Profile. It is a document that clearly describes what a candidate needs to have and how a candidate needs to be to be a superior performer in the job.

I have found the most effective means of communicating the picture is to provide a Desired and Essential grouping of competencies. The competencies can be divided into the to have type i.e. Education, Experience, and Special Skills and the to be type i.e. Emotional Intelligence, Values/Motivators and Behavior.  

Now the picture of the Ideal Candidate becomes someone who fits between the Desired and Essential attributes of Education, Experience, Special Skills, Emotional Intelligence, Values/Motivators and Behavior. With clarity provided from the Performance Based Job Description and the Ideal Candidate Profile you have the foundation to better hiring. No job should be filled without the creation of these two powerful selection tools.

Failure to Communicate Expectations: I find most hiring managers don’t concern themselves with expectations until they have filled the position. It is almost like they are saying “fill the position and worry about performance later” as if they could inject the new hire with talent after they are given the job. How can you hire someone to do a job and count on them to do it unless the expectations of the job are clear? The answer is you can’t. The old adage that says “if you don’t know where you are going you are not very likely to get there” is painfully true when it comes to hiring.

If you coordinate the job description with the job ad and reinforce the expectations at the beginning of the opening interview you have done everyone, candidate and organization, a big favor. I recommend that the performance expected be communicated and communicated and communicated. I recommend that hiring mangers ask for acknowledgement from a potential hire right up front in the opening interview. Here is how.

You have just met the candidate interviewing for the job you posted on Monster. The candidate has been vetted by a resume screen, assessment and a telephone interview and they are to meet the organization for the first time in an Opening Interview. This is how you open the interview:

“Hi Mary, my name is Steve and I am your contact today. Before we get into a question and answer time I want to refresh you memory about the expectations of the job. Here is the job description we sent to you earlier. Would you take a moment to read it? (she reads it) You say, “Tell me did you see anything there you don’t think you could do provided you had the right tools?” She says “no I didn’t.” “Great,” you say, “that is what I thought.” “Would just initial and date it? It will become part of your permanent interview file.” Then you proceed with the planned interview.

What has just happened? You have done several powerful things; Sent the message that your organization knows what it expects and respects the applicant to share that up front; Told the applicant how there performance will be judged and what is acceptable performance as well as superior performance and finally provided a coaching and accountability tool you can use to help the person be the best they can be in the future.  

Failure to Assess the Candidate Psychometrically: How do you see what you can’t see? With an assessment that measures the soft skills essential to superior performance but not readily apparent by observation in an interview.

Understanding what I call the “Three Great Rivers of Performance” and identifying their presence or absence in a candidate is a powerful selection tool. Those Rivers that feed into the lake of performance are what a person values, how a person behaves and what talents they have naturally.

There are only two ways we can determine the competency level one has in the three rivers; one is by observing performance and the other is by discovery through an accurate psychometric assessment. Most often we do not have the opportunity to observe a candidate in actual performance until after the hire and then it is too late if there are serious deficiencies.

There are many effective instruments that are sometimes better than observation so choose one and become expert in its use. A psychometric assessment system can be as much as one-third of the hiring process.

Faulty Interview Procedures: For some strange reason most hiring managers, if asked what part of their job they disliked the most, would say interviewing. That seems strange since people are an organization’s most important assets and interviewing is a major piece of the selection process. Still, there is an immense dislike of the interview by hiring managers. I believe I understand the reason and it is this: I am not trained and well prepared to do this job (interviewing). It is very important for me to make the right selection. It is part of my job but if I make the wrong decision, I get all the blame and may lose my job. All of that creates a stressful picture. If you do a good job at interviewing it is just your job and if you do a bad job it can cost you your job.

The biggest mistake hiring managers make in the interview process is tending to hire people like themselves and the greatest challenge hiring manager’s face is remaining objective throughout the interview process. The Performance Based Job Description and Ideal Candidate Profile can help but more is needed.

Most importantly, interview training for middle managers is a must. The hiring manager needs to know that the know more about the interview process than the candidate.

Preparing for the interview requires the interviewer to know what questions they are going to ask, ask them and most importantly listen to the answer and score the answers so that at the end each candidate is scored on their answers to the questions. A structure to the interview, such as, having an introductory script, predetermined questions that require more than yes or no answers are a powerful piece allowing the interviewer to focus on the answer by the candidate.

Behavioral style interview questions are all about asking questions that require more than one word answers. An example might be: “Tell me about a time when you had to admit that you made a mistake. What did you do? What was the outcome? What did you learn?” Becoming skillful in the use of what I call a hiring manager’s best friends; What? When? Where? Why? Who? And How? is a measure of competency in a manager. Each of these fiends helps to achieve the goal of listening eighty percent of the time and talking only twenty in an interview.

These behavioral style questions are not chosen at random but rather are a part of a planned discovery process, a process to discover if the candidate has and is using the talent required by the job.  Clearly the interview is a third of the hiring process.

Self-Image-Moving outside the box

The Self-Image is a critically important piece of the Self-Awareness pillar of Emotional Intelligence. Your Self-Image defines and limits almost everything you do. Self-Image is the gate-keeper, allowing access or denying access to your talents and ultimately to the achievement of your goals.
It makes no difference what the goal is, if it is not consistent with the image you hold of yourself, it is not going to happen.
A great picture of Self-Image can be illustrated by this little exercise:

1. Place a dot in the middle of a clean piece of paper
2. Make a dotted line box around the dot about one inch on each side
3. Make a solid lined box around the dot and smaller box, about five inches on each side.

Now the "dot" represents you, the small, dotted line box represents the image you have of yourself and the much larger, solid line box represents your potential (limited only by your physical limitations).
All too frequently we allow a negative or limiting self-image to limit our achievements.
Working to improve your Self-Image is fundamental to getting better. One of the best ways to improve your Self-Image is through self-talk. Two phrases demonstrate the value of self-talk. They are, "That's just me" and "I can be all I choose t be!" E.g. When confronted about being late for work you response is "I'm always late to everything", guess what, you will be. On the other hand if you talk to yourself as if your were known for arriving early because you believe in showing respect for other and the rules, you will move toward that goal and eventually it will become a new habit.
What is your Self-Image? Are you living in that little box without knowing the benefits outside the dotted lines. Build a Self-Image that expands the box.

Life Lessons from Bamboo

The fastest growing plant on the face of the earth is the Bamboo plant. At times its growth rate exceeds 39 inches an hour. It grows so fast that it often reaches its full height in just one growing season. Many species are monocarpic; they live their life, bloom and die. Along the way there are many unknowns, of course, just as in our own lives, but in the life of the bamboo plant lays a model for life from which, we can all learn.


I was in my garden yesterday doing some summer, clean up work and many of my Giant Zinnias were laying on the ground from the weight of the bloom and the rain from a recent rainstorm. The whole area they were in was looking pretty scruffy. I needed to “stake and tie them.”

In the coveted, shady corner of my garden I have bamboo growing and I frequently cut stalks and use them as stakes for tomatoes, roses and the like. I figured bamboo stakes would be ideal for this task and cut several. As I was cutting I thought about how useful the bamboo, in the corner of my garden had been, even though I received many warnings of the invasive nature of the plant and proclamations of an almost certain bamboo takeover if I planted it. Weighing the wisdom of the “plant gurus” and considering the damage the plant might do, I planted it anyway.

After living with like a “garden cancer” for years, today I read, in the Houston Chronicle, the story of a young man, David Carter, who was raising bamboo in Texas for a living. Always anxious to prove the experts wrong, my heart leaped as I read of how he had started this entrepreneurial experience to “push back” the growing landscape of cement in our cities and everywhere else you could imagine. He mentioned how much he admired the life cycle of the plant and how he related it to his own life. The bamboo lives its life, blooms and dies. How heroic a lifestyle is that he asked?

“Heroic lifestyle,” I thought. The world today needs some plain old heroes. I read on and as I read, I began to realize how right David was. There are great heroics in living a life, blooming (achieving your purpose) and dying. For over a full year the bamboo spends all its effort laying out a network of roots to support the later shoots that appear above ground, then the shoots grow quickly until they reach their full height, after years, sometimes as many as 80-100 years they bloom, then die.

Not a bad model for our lives. Here are a few thoughts I have about the lessen it teaches:

1. Lay down the root system


2. Bloom in glory


3. Die, knowing you have fulfilled your purpose

Laying Down the Roots: I wish I had been more patient and more aware as I laid my roots. I wish I had paid more attention to the need for careful consideration of what might come in the future. I wish I had given my roots more time to deepen and given more thought to their need for generating the bloom. I wish I had taken more time to grow-up!

Bloom in Glory: We all have a moment in life, an “ah ha experience,” where or purpose becomes clear and we are achieving it. That is what I call the “bloom” in life. My bloom came and went, as they all do.

I wish I had taken more time to enjoy its fragrance. One day the beauty of the bloom takes your breath away, the next day it is downhill. Blooms always seem to wilt too soon, but all must and all do. I wish I had taken more time to enjoy the bloom in my life. There are never too many. I hope for you a bloom of vivid color, entrancing fragrance and lasting presence.

Dying with Dignity: Nothing lives forever, everything lives and dies. Yet, far too little time is spent considering how we wish to die. We spend years considering how we should live, but often spend, only moments and sometimes no time at all, considering how we wish to die.

For me, I am going to be with my Lord, when I die, so I want to be ready (prayed up and forgiven) and I want to be presentable. I don‘t want any tubes attached to my arms or hanging out of my nose. I want to be clean shaven, hair slicked back and listening to my favorite song, “The Anchor Holds.” Oh, there is more to it than just that, but there is not enough time for all the details. I am praying and hoping that I will have the opportunity to leave with a commendation of having lived the life given to me, not perfect, but well - leaving behind the people I have touched and the places I have been, better than I found them.

Why not bamboo?

Win While Others Lose-A Formula for Success

Whether you can or you can't, believing that you can is more than 50 percent of the victory, far, far more!

1982 was not a good year in Houston, Texas or anywhere else, for that matter. I was in the insurance business at the time, about a third of the way through a 27 year career. Most of the Savings and Loans in the entire country and especially in Houston were either merged or confiscated or consolidated and run by the government for a several years.

Times were so bad; it seemed that most every real estate deal would fail. People were walking home mortgages right and left. Commercial developers were declaring bankruptcy in the droves. As and example, we were occupying space in a 7 story office building that was totally empty, for two years. Business was terrible and hope was something that few experienced.

The homeowners insurance market was suffering and that was being optimistic. Most of our 35 agents were in a survival mode. Everything they did was focused on hanging on the business they had and no, literally no effort was focused on acquiring new business. They believed that you could not sell homeowner's insurance, because prices were too high. This attitude was fueling an attitude of survival, rather than growth. No one was actively soliciting new homeowners business and guess what; no one was selling homeowners insurance.

That is, almost no one! No one except those agents that were new to the industry who did not know what older agent knew? Those agents fresh out of training that were anxious to build their agencies and their futures were selling homeowners insurance like it was going out of style. You see, they did not know that you could not sell homeowners insurance in this market and they were setting sales records. For the years beginning in 1982 and continuing through our leaving the industry in 1997 we led the entire company in homeowner's insurance sales.

The reason? We taught them to believe that they could achieve what they wanted and gave them the tools to do so. We kept them away, as best we could, from those people who believed they couldn't because of the times or the environment or both. We taught them the success formula:

E + R = O

O is for outcome, what ever outcome you hope to achieve from any E (event) you might encounter is determined by your R (response). We taught them that they were in control, not others, not the environment, not anything!

We taught them to be pro-active about their future and focus on what was necessary to achieve their goals and they did. They developed an attitude of success, not survival. They adopted an attitude of "I can instead of I can't." They believed they were winners and they were! Attitude is everything!

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Businesses Fail at an Alarming Rate

Eight of ten business fail. Eight of ten is breathtaking, to say the least. If it happens so often, why is business failure so painful? Possibly it is because most start-up businesses are a direct reflection of the founder/entrepreneur.
No one starts a business with a goal of failure. Everyone begins with visions of success. When a business fails it gobbles up all involved and takes them "down with the ship."
Perhaps, before we start a business, it would be important to consider why business fail. There are many, of course, but some of the more common are listed in the poll: 
http://polls.linkedin.com/p/94999/xxzyp  Please give us your opinion.
Thanks!

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