A Tale of Two Service Providers

Mitt Romney made news recently when he said he loves firing service providers when they don't provide good service.  I do it when necessary, but what I love is doing business with great service providers.  And two of them really bailed me out recently.

One is JC Robles, a guy who handles technical details on some of the webinars I do.  He lives in Chicago, so I've never met him, but I know he's great.  A couple weeks ago, he went the extra mile to save me from a real problem.  I won't bore you with the details, but he alerted me to a problem I didn't know existed.

First he sent a text message.  But I didn't recognize the number, it just said call me, it's important.  Later that night, about 10:00, I'm shutting down my computer, and there's an urgent email to call him.  Ah, the text was from JC!  I call him, he explains it, walks me through the solution, gets up early the next day to do other fixes, and I was good to go.  Great service!

Last week, it was my local technology guy, Randy Carbone of RC Computers.  I experienced a disaster, and called him at 9:00 at night.  I needed the computer fixed and ready for a webinar by noon the next day.  Randy said, "Bring it over, I'll look at it, and if possible have it for you in time."

Sure enough, he called early the next morning, said it was fixed, and then he dropped it off at my house!  Really saved me a ton of aggravation.  And, he called that night just to make sure everything worked ok.  That's one of my many Randy Carbone stories.  He gives excellent service.

I love doing business with JC Robles and Randy Carbone.  They provide excellent service, and I'm lucky to have them on my team.

Advance Notice for Leadership Improvement

Here’s advance notice for my next leadership webinar on Thursday January 26, 1:30pm to 3:30pm.

If you want to get a jump on your competition in the New Year, this webinar will do it. A prudent investment of $225 can lead to improved profitability through more sales, better customer service, or greater productivity.

Your investment includes taking the Leadership Acceleration Profile assessment, a customized report, a workbook, and the two-hour webinar.

Click here for information:
Leadership Acceleration Profile Webinar

If you have any questions, call me at 856-218-7200.

Terry
===============================================
Terry Wall, President
T.G. Wall Management Consulting, LLC
Washington Township, NJ
Accelerating Success
Building Winning Teams through:
Leadership Development. . . .Strategic Planning
Team Building. . . .Coaching. . . .Assessments & Surveys

856-218-7200 http://www.tgwall.com

Where To Find More About Purpose

My writing about Joe Paterno's leadership failure, and the importance of focusing on your purpose, prompted my colleague, Bob Palumbo, General Manager at Stokes Creative Group, to ask for more information.  So, I sent him a previous column I wrote about figuring out what your company purpose is.

And that prompted me to create a new web page to list all the columns I've written about purpose.  I'm passionate about the importance and awesome power of purpose.  But until I got Bob's request, I didn't realize how often I've written about it.

So if you want more of my thoughts on the importance of your company (or department, team, etc.) purpose, here's where you can find other columns I've written on the awesome power of purpose:
Importance, Power of Purpose

To refresh your memory, in my November 11 post, I had said that focusing on the company purpose is always good whenever you're not sure what you should do.   And that when in doubt, you should use your purpose as a moral compass.  If Paterno had done this, he would have retired on his own terms, instead of having the Board of Trustees fire him.

Let me know what YOU think!

Avoid Paterno’s Leadership Failure by Focusing on Your Purpose

Leadership Unlimited
A Monthly Column by Terry Wall
November 2011: Avoid Paterno’s Leadership Failure by
Focusing on Your Purpose

Joe Paterno’s decision to coach the remaining games,
a decision later nullified by his firing, was a
leadership failure. By focusing on his purpose, he
should have seen that coaching out the schedule was a
terrible idea.

Learn from his leadership failure that you should use
your purpose as a moral compass to guide you in
making tough decisions.

I’ve said before that when we focus on the purpose,
we get ourselves and others more engaged in the work,
more committed to goals, and more productive in our
jobs.

But, whenever we’re faced with big decisions, we need
to ask whether a decision will promote the purpose,
or detract from it. Had Paterno done this, he should
have come to the inescapable conclusion that he
should NOT coach the rest of the season.

A former player said that Paterno had taught him and
his teammates to be men as opposed to the boys they
were when they came to Penn State as freshman. So I
see Paterno’s purpose as “transforming boys into
honorable men.”

Paterno was enabling a child predator to continue
abusing children, and he described this tragedy as
“one of the great sorrows of my life.” Why it wasn’t
the “greatest” sorrow, I don’t know.

But he should have asked himself if coaching the
remaining games might look like “business as usual,”
or not showing enough sorrow for the children who
were abused because of Paterno’s enabling.

He should have let his purpose, as his moral compass,
guide his actions.

If building honorable men means teaching them
leadership, personal responsibility, and compassion
and concern for others, then coaching out the season,
was NOT the right decision.

Some might think he was showing how you carry on with
determination when faced with adversity. I disagree.

Maybe you do that with a “personal” adversity, the
death of a loved one, or something like that. But
this was larger than any personal loss. This was a
tragedy of stunningly profound proportions, involving
the sexual abuse of totally innocent children.

The moral compass of building honorable men should
have shown him that this tragedy was bigger than Joe
Paterno, or the team, or the university. The best way
to build honorable men would have been to retire
immediately.

And, although Paterno isn’t the only person
responsible for this tragedy, focusing on his purpose
when he first discovered the abuse would have
prompted him to take appropriate action. That would have
prevented subsequent abuse.

Leaders take responsibility for their actions, and
have laser-like focus on their purpose.

In his decision to coach the remaining games, Joe
Paterno, a talented man who has done a lot of good,
didn’t focus on his purpose.

Know your purpose. Articulate it. Use it as your
moral compass.

Until next edition, keep leading the way!

Copyright (C) 2011 by Terry Wall

10 Tips for Reducing Nervousness When Giving a Speech or Presentation

Feeling some nervousness before giving a speech is natural and healthy. It shows you care about doing well. But too much nervousness can be detrimental. Here's information from Toastmasters (I've been a member since 1992) on how you can control your nervousness, and make effective, memorable. presentations:

1. Know the room. Be familiar with the place in which .you will speak. Arrive early, walk around the speaking area, and practice using the microphone and any visual aids.

2. Know the audience. Greet some of the audience as they arrive. It's easier to speak to a group of friends than to a group of strangers.

3. Know your material. If you're not familiar with your material or are uncomfortable with it, your nervousness will increase. Practice your speech and revise it if necessary.

4. Relax. Ease tension by doing warm-up physical exercises.  Don't work up a sweat, just get loose.

5. Visualize yourself giving your speech. Imagine yourself speaking, your voice loud, clear, and assured. When you visualize yourself as successful, you will be successful.

6. Realize that people want you to succeed. Audiences want you to be interesting, stimulating, informative, and entertaining. They don't want you to fail.

7. Don't apologize. If you mention your nervousness or apologize for any problems you think you have with your speech, you may be calling the audience's attention to something they hadn't noticed.

8. Concentrate on the message - not the medium. Focus your attention away from your own anxieties and outwardly toward your message and your audience. Your nervousness will dissipate.

9. Turn nervousness into positive energy. Harness your nervous energy and transform it into vitality and enthusiasm.

10. Gain experience. Experience builds confidence, which is the key to effective speaking.  A Toastmasters club can provide the experience you need.

The Attention Deficit Society

Maybe it's all the time we spend on the Internet.  Or maybe all the video games.  Or just the fast-paced way we live our lives, but something is driving us to become an Attention Deficit Society.

I notice it mostly in email exchanges.  I send someone an email asking them to address points A and B.  Invariably, the response comes back addressing either A OR B, but not both.  Since these folks function normally otherwise, and show no indications of regular ADD, I can only presume they're afflicted with the societal version.

It's gotten to the point where I rarely send out requests to address points A and B.  Instead, I send an email asking about point A.  When I get the response, I simply reply, saying, "Thanks for the response.  That reminds me, what about point B?"  It requires two emails, but it gets the job done.

Another indication is not fully catching everything in an email, and this usually occurs in a "lengthy" email.  (The standard for "lengthy" gets shorter and shorter; it now stands at about 5 lines.)  In this instance, I inform the other person on things they need to know about Tom, about Jim, and about Sally.

Here the response is, "What about Jim?"  And it isn't always the middle topic that gets missed.  Somehow we're just so busy breezing through emails, that we miss important information. 

In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that I'm guilty of it, too.  It happened just today when someone emailed me about...what was it?  I forget...

Did I tell you what happens when I ask people to address points A and B?  It's about the Attention Deficit Society....

Labor Day, and Engagement's Missing Ingredient

Labor Day reminds me that although the unemployed would be happy with any kind of job, meaningful work is a key to employee engagement and satisfaction.  Meaningful work is the difference between a job you do just for the paycheck, and the job you look forward to every day. 

As Fyodor Dostoevsky said, "Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad."  Ok, maybe they won't go mad, but they certainly will be mad.  Mad at their plight, at their bosses, at their companies.  And angry people just don't do the best work.

That's why leaders should be doing everything they can to provide "meaningful" work.  No matter how menial the work may be, it's up to the leaders to show the employees the connection between the work (the tasks and activities) and the noble purpose. 

Somehow that work makes the world a better place, and leaders need to uncover this purpose, and focus the employees on it.

As I've said before, that purpose usually involves serving the customer.  The work makes the world a better place by serving customers, solving customers' problems, making the customers' worlds better places.  When employees focus on this, employees' worlds become better places.

So this Labor Day, commit to making every day a celebration of meaningful work, and employee engagement.  Ask yourself some questions:  What are you doing to provide meaningful work?  How are you connecting the job tasks and activities to the grand or noble purpose?