Working on Purpose

I was thinking the other day about when I first graduated from college and began working in the family business. I am a lifelong student of business with a keen interest in how to drive growth and long-term success. From the very beginning I have dreamt of taking our business to even greater heights, which would be an amazing accomplishment based on how successful my parents have been in founding and establishing our company. Not just so I could reap the rewards and benefits for myself but so that we could build something together that everyone with a stake in the business could take pride in.

I remember back in those early days reading and thinking a lot about writing a Corporate Mission Statement. It was the hot management topic of the day in the business world and was being used to foster growth and ingenuity at a time when business and economic growth was practically guaranteed. The exuberance of the developing world economy and companies with newly defined corporate missions fueled a time of impressive growth and fostered the dreams of a young business grad looking to make his mark on his company and the greater marketplace. It was a dream that lived for over a decade and consumed too much of my time. It propelled me to seek and earn an MBA to add even more business acumen seeking to bring my value and worth forward in new and exciting ways.

Fast forward a few years and here we are in 2011. A lot of business fads have come and gone. So have a lot of businesses. It is a cruel world to own any kind of business these days but whether in times of great gains or great losses, great advances in technologies and efficiencies or great setbacks in ability to secure financing or credit one thing has remained the same and will long after I am gone. Human nature.

We all have deep rooted desires. Many are as different as each individual person, however when it comes to work we all have some basic needs: to be recognized and compensated for our efforts, to learn, to be challenged and to have a feeling that what we do matters. As a business owner I walk a fine line between working in the business versus working on the business. While there are many things I enjoy doing and can easily justify spending my entire day get involved in the minutiae of my business it is imperative for the long-term success of my business that I always have an eye on the future.

About a year ago I started working on a project that quickly grabbed my interest. How could we take our 300 plus year old company and revive and reinvigorate ourselves from the inside out? How do we use the successes of our past as a platform to catapult us to new heights that I have been dreaming about for 25 years? Even in a difficult economy! With a fair investment of time and a little money I have found some answers and we are just beginning to implement some of our findings. The tide has turned, the winds have changed and corporately, we are all uniting together around some common language and purposes.

I look forward to sharing specific ideas and results in upcoming posts but for now here are some of the questions we asked ourselves that I think are worthy for consideration by any individual or corporation aspiring to greater things. Why do we exist? What needs and desires drive us towards our intended outcomes? Who and what do we hope to become? What purpose we were created to fulfill that we can uniquely fill in a way that makes a difference for all of our consumers, customers and stakeholders?

Best wishes for some purposeful contemplation!

The Art of the Ask

I've written in previous posts about the importance of staying in touch with customers, constituents and contacts.  In the age of e-mail, instant messaging and social media I think people are actually delighted to have face to face or person to person conversations today.  At least all of those over the age of 21.

So it occurs to me and I've been reading up a lot lately, how do you get people to slow down and find out what is really going inside and around the people you're meeting and talking with?  It is my experience, especially in a situation where you may be trying to get someone to think differently and to take on your way of thinking that both parties will try to do whatever they can to begin and end the conversation as quickly as possible.  If you get people to say "yes" enough times then the thinking goes they will say "yes" when you ask them to agree with your line of thinking or buying what you're trying to sell them.  This model is as outdated as command and control corporations where the marching orders are read every morning and the soldiers fall in line or they get replaced. 

In another attempt to verify the old adage of my father is absolutely 100% correct I can say again if it was easy anybody could do it.  Most people don't, though.  What's that you ask?  My answer is yes!  If you're not totally confused yet hang in for another sentence or so.  To answer your question with another question (one of the techniques that shows you are mastering the skill) my question to you is "How good are you at asking questions?"  It seems obvious but just in case I don't mean innocuous yes or no or mindless questions such as:

• How are you today?
• What's new with you?
• How's business?
• Can you believe the weather we're having?

You have just asked questions that require slightly less thought to answer than you put in to asking them.  In fact if you're asking them of people who have limited time to talk to you anyway you're wasting both of your times and on some level outright looking stupid in their mind's eye.

The quality of your questions gives you a leg up on 95% of the population (and your competitors) for several reasons.  Here is a list of a few and I assure you there are more:

• It shows people you care
• It causes people to open up and be more honest about their feelings and motivations
• It demands that you become a better listener
• It takes the pressure off of your meeting, especially if it is with someone you just met or are trying to sell to or persuade to think differently about a product, service, or point of view
• It puts you in a position of leading the conversation while the other person feels like they are the ones doing all the speaking and thereby in control
• It produces results

Try it out for a week and see if you don't get different (better) results in your personal, professional and social conversations.  Need a few suggestions?  Let me get you started:

Instead of....
How's business?
Give this a try...
What are your business goals for this month?  Quarter? Year?
Followed by....
What are you focusing on to help deliver these results?
Further enhanced by...
How are you partnering with your vendors and involving your employees to ensure the results you need?

One more...
Instead of...
How are you today?
Try...
Tell me the most fun (insert any other adjective, i.e. exciting) thing that happened to you today?
Drop the...
What's up?
Instead say...
What are you planning for fun this upcoming weekend?  Next week?  This month?

You get the idea and you can come up with better ones than I did.  The key is to practice - every day.  The goal is to get people to talking about themselves, to tell you what has their attention, what they are interested in and what motivates and moves them.  All of this from a simple question?  I'll close again by answering a question with a question:

How do you expect to get different and better results in all areas of your life if you're not willing to try something new?  I'm just askin'.....

How to WOW!

I had the pleasure of attending and exhibiting at the FN Platform show which runs alongside the MAGIC Show in Las Vegas last week.  It is one of my favorite weeks of the year not just because Las Vegas is my personal grown up Disneyland but because for one of only two times during the year all of my friends, customers and acquaintances from within the shoe industry come together under on roof to renew old relationships, meet new people and commiserate on the future of our industry and the economy as a whole. 

The show itself is almost anti-climatic just like the wedding ceremony or the prom dance.  What I mean is that there is so much preparation, planning and work that goes in to what gets done once the actual event rolls around that it's actually a relief to just get to the opening day of the show and to be able to put all those weeks of meetings and hours of work in to action.  While I suspect that everyone puts the same amount of work into preparing for the show as we do it is interesting to watch and see how people do things differently and how our expectations vary.  There are three very distinct approaches with not very surprising results:

The Show Up Hopers: These well meaning folks just can't understand why business is so slow and are happy to proclaim to anyone who will listen what a bust the show is.  The funny thing is these folks seemingly do little or nothing to prepare to make a great first impression on their customers and prospects and they even more inexplicably assume that "if they build it, they will come."  What's more their preparation weeks and months ahead of the show seems to match their first impression and they do very little to intentionally drive traffic to their booth.  That's a hard way to make a living in today's world.  And a long three days to sit in an empty booth and watch all the business go somewhere else.

The Steady Eddies: Nothing really wrong with these folks at all.  They are consistent, reliable, loyal and (dare I say) predictable.  They pretty much do the same thing every time and their same customers come to see them just like they do every show.  They are happy with the status quo and as long as they see all the "regulars" it's a good show.  This is where the majority of us live not just at shows but in our day to day roles and jobs.  Do enough to be successful but skirt the extra degree or two of effort it takes to really make things happen.

Those Who WOW!: Sadly, I can count the number of these folks that I saw last week on one hand.  Sure, they had great looking products but so do a lot of their competitors.  These guys went above and beyond to stand out.  They had a great strategy for how to generate interest, attract new customers and WOW everyone that walked in the booth.  They had a well executed theme and strategy and from what I could tell it paid off - BIG TIME.  Not only were customers talking about it but so were competitors. 

Admittedly, we fell way too much in to the steady Eddy category and didn't do nearly enough to WOW! last week.  It's not easy because it means every day you have to push yourself and not let up.  You have to not accept good from yourself or anyone else - you demand greatness!  There are always plenty of reasons why things don't turn out quite the way we wish - and we are experts at justifying the reasons why.  Steady as she goes.....

I would rather push myself to keep searching "How to WOW."  It's hard work, it's uncomfortable, it tests your patience and sticktoitiveness but it seems to me the results are all worth it.  I hope next time they are all talking about me!