Business Toolkit – Page 49 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

Achieving Focus – Guest Blogger

June 12, 2008/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

I’m thrilled to bring you Ed Ruggero as a guest blogger this week. You’ll find some background on Ed at the end of the post. I hope you enjoy his thoughts as much as I do. Here’s Ed:

Recently I watched some paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division train for deployment to Iraq. At one training site engineers had constructed a roofless house with thick walls—plywood covering stacked tires—some fifteen feet high and topped with a catwalk for observers. Working in groups of five, the paratroopers gathered by the entrance in tight formations, chest to back, each man keenly aware of everyone’s location. On a signal from the leader—usually the second man in line—the point man battered open the first door and the team rushed in.

They moved quickly and methodically from room to room, rifles shoulder high, firing disciplined bursts of three rounds at life-sized targets positioned inside. Often the muzzles of their weapons were just a foot away from a buddy. The first man in had to trust that the second man would immediately cover the other side of the room—the blind spot. Any one of them acting carelessly might have shot a buddy in the back. So, of necessity, the paratroopers’ movements were well-choreographed—quick and deadly.

When I told my wife about the exercise, she asked if I’d ever trained with live ammunition during my time in the Army, and I said I had. “What was that like?” she wanted to know. “Well, working with live ammunition flying all over the place tends to focus your thinking,” I said.

Outlookicide

June 2, 2008/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Communications /by Mike Figliuolo

Meetings give me a rash. A really bad one. One that not even calamine lotion can soothe. The only things worse than meetings are reports. Standard daily reports, weekly reports, hourly reports. Reports on the status of reports. If I wasn’t already insane, these things would drive me insane.

Take a look at your Outlook for this week (or if you’re a rebel, look at your Lotus Notes). How much time is spoken for already? How little time is left for you to actually get stuff done? Now take a look at your inbox. How many Excel files are in there with their thousands of rows of data that no one will look at until some SVP gets bored, opens one up and asks a random question about a data point no one has looked at in months? Even more alarming is if you have folders in your Outlook dedicated to storing each of these reports so you can quickly answer said random questions because you have the reports conveniently stored on your laptop. By the way, they’re probably also stored on a shared drive somewhere so you’ve now doubled the amount of data storage space required for this crap repository.

Fear not my friends. There is a cure.

I never want to be [sic]k

May 19, 2008/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications /by Mike Figliuolo

Reading the news (or even your email) can be distressing and can drive one to the point of despondency. It can also be fun. It’s especially fun when people say or write silly stuff and the reporter has to write “[sic]” after a misspelling or stupid comments in the original transcript. “[Sic]” technically means “Thus; so. Used to indicate that a quoted passage, especially one containing an error or unconventional spelling, has been retained in its original form or written intentionally.” Said more simply, it’s a way for the author of the article to point out the person they’re quoting can’t spell quite as well as they can or to indicate the speaker speaks funny.

To be clear, I never want to be [sic]. Being [sic] means I forgot to hit the spell check button before I put something in the pubic [sic] domain (See? It can be funny!). It means I’ve been less than attentive to basic tenants [sic] of professionalism. It reflects poorly on me and really tests the patients [sic] of my readers. In some cases, it reflects a certain level of disrespect for my audience as it implies they’re not even important enough for me to spell check before presenting an idea to them. At the very least it indicates I don’t have enough spare change to buy a pocket dictionary or buy web access to get to dictionary.com.

I’m not saying I’m bettor [sic] than people who misspell things. I’m simply trying to point out that the one minute you save by not proofreading something costs you immeasurably in terms of your own personal brand equity. I saw a massage [sic] the other day where the author was exhorting people to do their diligence on companies before interviewing with them because “failing to do so can undermine your creditability [sic].” Hmmmm. I’m thinking using “creditability” instead of “credibility” undermines your credibility more than not doing your diligence, no?

Rabid Ferrets In The Corner… Give Them An Out

May 13, 2008/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications /by Mike Figliuolo

Stupid stuff is going to happen. Expect it. It’s part of our complex and highly interdependent world. People will make mistakes. A lot of them. Layer on top of that some incredibly politically charged cultures (for more on that subject see “Hot Heads and Karma”) and there’s an abundance of potentially bad outcomes.

There will be times where stupid stuff will happen to you (and yes, there are times you will do stupid stuff – accept it as axiomatic). When really stupid stuff happens (known as “stoooooopid” stuff it’s so stupid), it can feel like others are conspiring against you. It can seem like a plot of Oliver Stonesque proportions. During those situations, the outcomes are mostly binary – you defuse the situation or it blows up sometimes causing irrepairable harm to your career or reputation. You may even have an urge to attack the responsible individual. Doing so can create a situation where they feel like a rabid ferret backed into a corner. When you create that dynamic, they’re most likely to attack back (and rabid ferrets can be NASTY!).

The good news is, there are ways to defuse these events simply by adopting the right mindset.

When you’re facing that little fang-baring whirling devil-spawned rodent, give them an out. Create a way for them to gracefully exit the situation without a full-on conflict. They want a fight as little as you do.

To Fall on the Sword… or Not

April 29, 2008/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

I love passionate people. People who throw themselves into their work with every last erg of energy they have. To them, everything about their work is important. It’s serious business and they drive hard to form the world in an image they’re proud of.

With passion, however, comes peril. If everything is important, you tend to get worked up over every issue no matter how large or small. You feel it necessary to stand up for what’s right in every instance. You might even seek to transform situations by injecting yourself into them even if you don’t really have a say in the matter. The result is repeatedly diving on your sword for many issues or sticking your beak where it doesn’t belong and getting involved in problems that are larger than you.

As usual on this blog, I’m going to give you a helpful little tool to help you avoid all those nasty sword gashes. All you have to do is ask and answer one simple little question:

“What’s the upside?”

That’s it. That simple. That single question will keep you out of more trouble than you can imagine. It provides what I call “clarifying moments” that help you better evaluate a situation and the possible range of impacts and implications of the actions you’re considering. If there’s no upside, it’s not worth fighting for or taking the risk. If the upside is clear, dive on in.

Hot Heads and Karma – It All Works Out

April 17, 2008/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Career, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Perspective and patience. It’s a challenge especially in a lightning-fast business world filled with Type A’s, cro-magnons, and Machiavellian punks (read The Prince for more detail on this last point). It’s enough to make a sane person lose their mind (and in the case of the insane like myself, it means we have to attend therapy more frequently than we already do).

Bad behavior happens every day. There’s classic micro-management where your superior is giving detailed instructions on how you should adjust your desk chair. There’s cro-magnonesque screaming and berating of subordinates who are doing nothing but their best yet market forces stall their efforts. There are the up-and-comers who behave like the fastest way to the top involves stepping on the backs, heads, and faces of those around them. And my favorite, the office politics and intrigue that would impress even the most conniving CIA and KGB veterans of the cold war. You confront these and other onerous acts daily. So what can you do?

You have a few choices. You can play their game. You can get so bent out of shape over it you look like a bag of Rold Gold pretzels. You can focus on what matters and, like Jason Lee on “My Name is Earl,” believe in Karma. Let’s dissect these…