Category Archives: Achievement

Accountability, Achievement, Leadership, Self Analysis

Credibility

Let’s make certain that we are all on the same page from the start here:

Your personal credibility is the currency that you use for all of your business transactions. And like any other currency it is subject to many events and actions that can affect its value. Just like the value of the Dollar can fluctuate with respect to other currencies, the amount of credibility attributed to you can also fluctuate with respect to other leaders.

I had just read some article about writing that said something to the effect of “write killer first sentences to make sure you hook your readers into your story”, and thought I would give it a try. Somehow it doesn’t seem to have me hooked, but then again I’m writing this instead of just reading it. I await feedback to see what the rest of you think.

By the way, I didn’t finish the article. I guess I wasn’t fully hooked.

Despite the somewhat ham-handed introduction I want to look at the role that our credibility plays in business and leadership. I think it is important in that our personal credibility can be the difference between “compliance” with our requests and directives, and “commitment” to our leadership. Compliance occurs because you may inhabit a role where others who report to that role must respect the requests of the “office”. Commitment occurs when the transition is made from aligning with the requests of the office to aligning with the requests of the person in the office.

It’s subtle, but significant.

Credibility is a pretty strange concept. You can increase your credibility by doing incredible things. On the other hand you can decrease or even destroy your credibility by claiming to be able to do incredible things. Credibility is somewhat similar to a retirement or savings account. Credibility is built up over time with continually reinforced deposits. It is added to slowly over time. However it can be destroyed or fully withdrawn as the result of a single, poorly planned action.

Your credibility is based upon other people’s beliefs in your abilities.

Think about that for a minute. Your credibility is not entirely based upon your abilities. Your credibility is not entirely based on what you think you can do, or even on what you know you can do. It is based on what you have done and other people’s opinions of your abilities and what you have done. This idea can lead to multiple mismatches within the business organization.

You can believe you are credible, when others don’t. You can believe someone else is credible when others don’t. You can believe someone else lacks credibility when others ascribe credibility to them. All of these situations can add to the complexities already infesting the business process.

Many items contribute to people’s opinions. It is not just what they observe, but also what they are told, what they hear, and how it is presented. It is also based upon what people want to believe as well. People are required to sort through a blizzard of information on a daily basis. While we all strive to be as objective as possible, sometimes based on the inputs we have received it may be difficult. Such are the vagaries of credibility.

I guess that sometimes credibility doesn’t seem to matter. As I have noted before, we have all been through the various political election seasons where various politicians are contending to see who can appear to be the most credible while claiming to be able to do the most incredible things. This would seem to violate almost all of the precepts associated with credibility, but such is the case for politics. This seems to be a case of who can tell the most people what they want to hear, and not so much what they need to know.

However there are those in business that can also be described as being politically astute. I think that may be where the term originated with respect to business performance. We all know these types. They are more capable of being able to tell people what they want to hear and not so much what they need to know. We look upon them with a mixture of both derision and jealousy. They are able to take what appears to be failure and position it as success. They can take the smallest success and spin it as a game changing moment in business. They seem to be able to create credibility out of almost nothing at all.

Personally, I prefer to see the data.

Here in lies the issue with credibility. It is almost always a personal preference issue. By telling someone something that they want to hear, no matter how outlandish or impossible you can increase your credibility with that person. At the same time there may be those that recognize the implausibility of those statements and will accord a decrease in your credibility because of them.

Every time you say something or do something in business, you change your perceived credibility. Statements are interesting in that they can affect your credibility twice: once as they are first made when people can consider the relative plausibility of them, and then again a second time when the result of the statement can be measured out against the reality of the business performance.

It is somewhat interesting to me in that the credibility associated with actions can only be measured once, when they occur.

It is the action in business that is the credibility defining event. Promising huge growth, or market defining strategies, or game changing products are all well and good. We have all seen many such announcements. It is the delivery of growth, the implementation of strategies and the introduction of new products that define the true credibility. Sooner or later all statements or claims will eventually need to be backed up with performance and attainment.

We have all seen the effect of setting expectations in the valuations of companies in the market. During the quarterly earnings announcement times the company’s actual performance is measured against the markets perceived expectations for earnings. Those companies that consistently “miss” these expectations tend to be priced lower, because the expectations that they set lack credibility.

In short credibility is based on doing. It can be based on doing what you say you can do, but the key aspect is the doing. Meeting the deadline. Achieving the goal. Doing it almost as a matter of course. It seems that Tom Peters, the co-author of the book “In Search of Excellence” has been attributed as the first to coin the phrase:

“Under promise, over deliver.”

It sounds simple to do. If it was, everyone would have a high credibility rating. The reality is that not everyone ascribes to this approach. That’s why we have “marketing”.

Many things go into the credibility that you are accorded. Your level of confidence, how you position or phrase things, it may even be somewhat indefinable as in “charisma”. In the final analysis the end result of what you do will be the primary contributing factor to your credibility. If you are recognized as someone who does what they say they will do, then over time you will build credibility. If that is not the case, you will very quickly lose credibility. And once lost, credibility is very hard to regain.

I wish I could think of a short cut to generating credibility, but I can’t think of one right now. If someone else claims to have one, I might question their credibility.

Accountability, Achievement, Analysis, Efficiency, Leadership

Getting Better

One of the things that I have learned as I have gotten older is that age doesn’t make you any smarter. It just provides you the experience to recognize the things you didn’t know the first time you saw them. It was Randy Pausch, the author of “The Last Lecture” who said:

“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted”

I have wanted many things that I have not gotten, so needless to say, I think I have probably gained a lot of experience. Some of this experience I think I probably could have done without, but I gained it anyway. What I think I now recognize is that sometimes solving some issues or fixing some problems may be beyond our individual or collective reach. The key to situations like this is to recognize them, and instead of trying to make the quantum leap from thoroughly screwed up to pristinely perfect, just try to make them better.

One of the other things that I have experienced is that just about every situation that I have been in falls into this category.

It’s now election season and the number of talking heads earnestly speaking directly to us through our collective big screen televisions is growing. The various media outlets are lining up behind their favorites, and the various positions on the issues are being identified. In short it is the same thing all over again.

People are searching for the best thirteen second sound bite regarding their personal favorite unsolvable problem. Whether it’s the national debt, immigration, unemployment, or any other issue, it seems everyone is jockeying to position their glib and simple solutions to the Gordian knot style problems that are besetting us.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Gordian knot, in ancient times there was a knot that was thought to be unsolvable or intractable. When the knot was presented to Alexander the Great, who at the time was the acknowledged leader of the known world as a challenge, instead of trying to untie or solve the knot, he simply took out his sword and cut it. Believe it or knot (pun intended) this is thought to be the genesis of phrase and concept of “outside the box” thinking (True!).

When I look at today’s slate of candidates I am concerned that any of them that may in the remotest of possibilities be mentioned with or the even more remote possibility be positively compared with Alexander the Great. However there they are, swinging away with their metaphorical swords on television.

I think we have all see the business equivalents of these would be world beaters and problem solvers. They are the ones that have the “simple” answers to declining sales (‘just sell more”) or low margins (“just spend less”), or any other intractable long term problem that the business may be facing.

Unfortunately with all that is plaguing leaders in business today it is easy to see how they may fall victim to the siren song of the “simple solution” providers.

Please do not misunderstand me. I truly believe the basic premises of business are pretty simple. I have said this many times in the past. It is usually the business itself that adds complexity to its organization and operations in search of ever better and more eloquent was of completing the simple tasks required for it to run.

If a simple process adequately handles eighty percent of the situations then with only a little tweaking it might handle close to eighty five percent of the situations. A little more tweaking might get it to ninety percent. Still more might enable it to be implemented globally instead of specifically for the region in which is currently working. Still more might enable the creation and publishing of fancy metrics charts detailing various aspects of the process and the state of its implementation.

Eventually a process is created that works everywhere in all situations, but takes more effort and resource from the business to work for the entire business than the original eighty-twenty rule process that was the starting point.

It can be argued that the “getting better” approach to business could in fact be responsible for the evolution of both business and process into the complex systems that they are today. This would be akin to the example of taking several small logical steps one after the other to eventually arrive at an illogical conclusion or solution.

I think part of the issue we see in situations like this is the lack of rigor that is applied to defining the problem, setting a baseline and then measuring against the improvement on the baseline. If we all know that we need to improve then we just accept the premise. If we state that the plan is to take the solution global then why would we need to measure if there is in fact a global improvement? The goal is no longer improvement of the business but instead is now the global dispersion of the solution.

Getting better does not mean making breakthrough advancements, although these are always exciting and welcome. Rather it means actually trying to use the primary building blocks of the Continuous Improvement Process that J. Edwards Deming envisioned where Feedback drove Efficiency drove Evolution which in turn drove further feedback, and so on.

The key step in this cycle that seems to be missing in both politics and business today is the Efficiency review. Efficiency by its very nature requires the identification, reduction or elimination of sub-optimal structures and behaviors. The definition of efficiency is:

1. The ability to accomplish something with the least waste of time and effort; competency in performance.
2. The ratio of the work done or energy developed …. to the energy supplied…

Many thanks again to Webster’s Dictionary. One of my favorite books.

The idea of efficiency, and getting better means that we need to continuously look at what we are getting out of systems, processes and businesses as compared to the work that we are putting into them. Efficiency is not just the output, but the output as compared to the input required to get it. Too many times it seems that it is taken for granted that just because there is some new way of doing things, or a new process is being implemented that it is better (read more efficient) than what currently exists.

Almost everything that I read these days in books and periodicals regarding business performance seems to bemoan the loss of speed in business, or the lack or loss of decision making abilities in business, or the complexity that is now being faced in business. These seem to be issues that are now inherent in the business system. The simple command to “sell more” or “spend less” won’t solve them.

I guess the same goes for politics in that the system seems to have evolved to reward those that “sound” the best but in reality only kick the problem down the road for the next generation to deal with. Their simple solutions fit nicely into the thirteen second sound bites provided by the media for public consumption. Perhaps that is why it seems that in this iteration of the political campaigning those that are viewed as being outside the normal political process seem to be preferred more than the established politicians by the general populace.

At its most basic getting better, as well as efficiency means doing more business with less resource. That means that being efficient requires the removal of some functions, effort and work from the business as compared to the set baseline while still accomplishing the set goals. It doesn’t need to be a lot. It just has to be measurable in some fundamental way.

Getting better means making sure that attaining your goals actually, measurably improves the business. The simplest definition of getting better that I can think of is showing some measureable improvement in efficiency. If you can’t directly relate and measure the business activity to somehow improving the business efficiency (mathematically identifying work being done to work being saved or improved), then there is probably a pretty good chance that it is not associated with the business getting better.

Achievement, Incentives, Sales

Trophy Hunting

I was having a discussion with a friend the other day, and he made an interesting comment. He said that we were now in the day and age where a man could go and do what he likes to do, and what so many others had done before him, but now could wake up the following morning and have ten million people worldwide, hate him for doing it. He was referring to the hunter who killed the lion a few weeks ago in Zimbabwe, Africa. I think his name was Cecil. The lion, not the hunter.

Here is a man that has lived his life in relative anonymity, at least with respect to the ten million people worldwide that now hate him. He had gone about his business (as a dentist I think), and probably conducted and acquitted himself well. He must have, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to afford the relatively astronomical costs of flying half way around the world to pursue his desire to hunt big game.

He had been doing it for years (Big Game hunting that is). By several accounts he was very successful at it. Others have also been doing it for years. There are a lot of people around the world that do this. It is also a significant source of income for Zimbabwe in the form licenses from the state and fees for guides, and the costs associated with outfitting the trip. It is the commerce of big game hunting. There is a lot of money involved, and remember that Zimbabwe got paid all their fees well before Cecil got shot.

I also remembered (and through the wonders of Google went back and verified) seeing pictures of the famed author Ernest Hemingway on the cover of various magazines posing with various dead lions, leopards and water buffaloes that he had shot while big game hunting in Africa. He was also a big game hunter. Nobody thought Hemingway was a schmuck for shooting them. On the contrary, he had an image as a man’s man.

I suspect that none of the animals that Hemingway shot had a name though. It was probably a time where people didn’t name wild lions.

This is what happens when you shoot the wrong lion.

People also didn’t seem to mind nearly as much when Ahab went after the white whale that they named “Moby Dick”. That could possibly have been because that was an instance where the big game trophy fought back and actually won. I suspect that Moby was also probably not some country’s national pet.

Now back to the topic. Here was a man from Wisconsin, who flew half way around the world. He complied with all the legal requirements of Zimbabwe, hired a supposedly knowledgeable guide, and achieved his goal of shooting a lion. He didn’t break any laws. It appears that he was in an area where it was legal for him to shoot a lion. He had paid for all his licenses and permits. As I said, he just shot what turned out to be the wrong lion.

Now ten million people hate him. He is in hiding and can’t go back to work, which he obviously must do if he ever expects to be able to afford the now increased prices that Zimbabwe is charging for big game trophy hunts. It seems that everyone else who wants to hunt big game in Zimbabwe will also have to pay these higher fees, not just dentists from Wisconsin.

So, what does all this have to with anything?

I draw several parallels to business from all this. The hunters in business are usually called sales people. They are the ones that go out into the field, search out the opportunities and try and bag the mythical big game creature known as an “Order”. This is what they are paid to do.

As we all know, orders are the life-blood of any business. But not just any orders. It is orders for products and services that the business can actually supply that are desirable. It is also desirable that these bagged orders come with requirement of profitability. That means that by getting these orders the business can sustain itself and hopefully grow.

The guy who shot Cecil wasn’t doing anything like this. Shooting Cecil wasn’t going to enable the dentist to sustain himself or grow in any appreciable way. I don’t think that you can actually eat lion meat. At least I have never heard of it. He was shooting Cecil because for whatever reason, he wanted to be able to say he had shot a lion (in general, I think Cecil was just the unlucky individual).

What this brings up, is what should be the first law of hunting: If you don’t want someone to do something, don’t make it legal, or allow them to do it. If you don’t want the hunters to bring you undeliverable or unprofitable orders, make a rule or law that indicates this is not acceptable behavior.
If you don’t want Cecil specifically to be shot, make a law that says you cannot shoot lions. Cecil was a wild lion. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and a dentist from Wisconsin shot him. It could have easily been prevented if Zimbabwe had just said:

“We no longer allow anyone to shoot any of our lions, regardless of the foolish amount of money they are willing to spend or offer us to do so.”

The second law of hunting should then follow on or corollary and be: If something is allowed, or not specifically disallowed, don’t get mad at people when they do it. Hunters are focused on the goal. Bag the order. Bring down the target. If you are not specific about the type of orders to get and the requisite behaviors to be demonstrated during the hunt, you cannot be unhappy when improper, or undeliverable, or unprofitable orders are presented.

Zimbabwe had said in effect:

“You can hunt our lions.”

They didn’t say you could hunt every lion but Cecil. They did say you couldn’t hunt lions in certain areas, and to my understanding those areas were actually avoided by the hunters in question. I guess nobody ever thought that a wild lion in his right mind would ever leave a protected area where he couldn’t be hunted and wander into an unprotected area where Wisconsin dentists were hunting lions.

I think what we have learned from the adventures of Cecil and the dentist can probably best be described as the third law of hunting: In sales, like big game hunting, trophy hunting is probably not a good avocation.

In sales there are those that hunt orders to sustain and nourish the business. As I said, these orders are the life blood of the business. There are very few if any of these orders that are mounted and put up on the wall where people can come in and see what a ferocious order was bagged.

And like sales in this instance there are hunters who actually utilize hunting as a way to provide sustenance to their family or group. I don’t think anyone can have an issue with this type of hunter. However in the instance we are discussing, I don’t think this was the final disposition of Cecil. I believe he was destined to end up as either a rug or in a semi-ferocious mounting on the wall of some dentist’s office.

One of the best ways to tell if a sales person is trophy hunting or not is if they use the phrase “Strategic Business”. If they use this phrase, chances are that they are either looking for a lower price or trying to mount some sort of big game trophy on the wall, as opposed to actually doing the business that the business needs or may want. In that way trophy hunting doesn’t really serve a purpose in business. It may provide a nice visual for a wall but it doesn’t provide any value to the business. If it doesn’t provide a value, why do it?

If the dentist in Wisconsin knew this earlier, he probably wouldn’t have shot Cecil, and definitely wouldn’t be hated by ten million people, worldwide now.

Accountability, Achievement, consensus building, Leadership, Teamwork

Do We Still Want Teams

It seems that throughout our lives we have been indoctrinated into the idea and benefits of teamwork. I think it starts off when we are children and our parents sign us up for the various team sports that are available. Whether it is little league soccer (or football to my European friends), or little league baseball or youth football (American football, again for my European friends), many of us have been conditioned to want to be part of the team. While this may in fact be a good socializing activity for children, I am beginning to wonder if the current idea of teams and what they have evolved to in business, may have outlived its usefulness in the business game.

Those that know me probably can try to understand how I can possibly question such a basic and heartfelt tenet of business. Everybody else is probably wondering what planet I am actually from. Please bear with me as I go through some of the observations and thinking (or lack of thinking as the case may be) that are going into these questions regarding business teams.

A little background first. I actually played little league baseball as a kid. I wasn’t real good, but I wasn’t bad either. I played third base. As I recall, I didn’t enjoy it all that much. You only really get to play when a ball is hit to you, or it’s your turn to bat. The rest of the time it seemed to go pretty slow.

I moved on. I took up tennis. It was more active, more involved, more of an individual sport. By this I mean that there were usually only me and my opponent on the court at any one time. Oddly enough I was also part of the tennis team. However the difference here was that whether I won or lost was not the result of how the rest of the tennis team played. No one could “pinch hit” for me. I could win and the team could lose. I could lose and the team could win. The success of the tennis team was the result of the sum of the successes of each of the individuals on the team.

It was interesting in that no one individual could win a baseball game, but I guess it could be construed that an individual could lose one. An example would be the baseball player that commits the error that allows the winning run to score. It was also interesting that no team could win a tennis match. It was solely up to the individual performance as to who won or lost.

It was also interesting to note that whether you won or lost was the key. That was the reason you kept score. Unlike today, there were no “participation” trophies. I’ll leave that rant for another time.

As another aside, I think there have been several attempts to create a “Team Tennis” league or format over the years. I don’t think any of them have been successful. It seems the public is not buying into the idea that you can turn what is viewed as in individual contest into a team sport.

When you look at great advancements and successes in business you rarely have them associated with a “team”. You have Bill Gates, and to a much lesser extent Steve Ballmer and Paul Allen at Microsoft. You have Steve Jobs and again to a lesser extent and Steve Wozniak at Apple. If you want to look at historical game changers look at Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. You don’t hear about their teams. You hear about them, and how they led the way and what they did to succeed.

Teams seem to only be good if a leader steps up and provides the vision and direction and an unwillingness to accept anything other than the attainment of the goal. At that point “the” team actually seems to become “their” team. I am sure that there were many others involved with the successes attributed to the men I listed above, but it was the leadership and the force of will associated with the names listed that actually carried the day. The teams may have been good, but it seems that in many instances it was the individuals that were better.

I have written in the past that I believe the consensus environment present in business these days is the evolution of a defensive mindset. The appreciation and value associated with success seems to be overshadowed by the fear and avoidance of making a mistake. The consensus environment has evolved as a way to homogenize the business decision making process. If consensus is achieved there is a security in knowing that if the wrong decision was made, everyone else made it too and the blame will be equally spread.

More and more it seems that teams are created not to achieve a goal, but to achieve a consensus.

If we look at Gates, Jobs, Ford, Edison and Tesla, it is apparent that there were in fact teams associated with their achievements. But they were not the teams of today. They were teams that were organized and structured specifically to realize the vision of the individual. There are many stories associated with each individual where they would not accept less than their vision or compromise their goals based on the input of the rest of the team. There are also stories associated with what the teams went through in order to achieve the visions and goals of the leader.

There was never a question about a consensus or who would be responsible for any failures associated with the team.

They understood that if there was a failure, it was their failure, not the teams. Their team was an extension of their drive and direction. They also seemed to have a different definition or approach to failure. Thomas Edison had this to say about failure:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 1,000 ways that won’t work.”

Bill Gates had this to say about failure:

“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”

And finally, Steve Jobs said:

“Embrace every failure. Own it, learn from it, and take full responsibility for making sure that next time, things will turn out differently.”

These were leaders that failed and were not afraid to fail again. They didn’t like failure. They hated it. They didn’t accept failure as the final decision. If they failed, they viewed it as temporary and something to learn from. They moved on and found another way to succeed. They didn’t stop until they succeeded.

In the team built, consensus oriented business environments of today it appears that company and organizational teams are more afraid of the perception of failure, no matter how transitory than they are driven by the need for success. These leaders understood that success had to be driven, that failure was to be learned from, and that mitigating responsibility for it was not part of the plan.

The team that was once organized to fulfill the vision of the leader seems now to be structured to protect the team members from the stain of possible failure. The avoidance of the responsibility for failure seems to have limited the team’s value as well as its ability to succeed. If everyone on the team must agree on a direction if the team is to move forward, then the team only moves forward very slowing.

If the structure and value of a team has indeed been reduced to furthering the consensus approach to doing business, is it time to step away from it? Gates and Jobs and all the others were very successful without it. Or rather, they built their teams to specifically follow their vision. The fear of failure didn’t paralyze them. They weren’t really all that interested in a consensus. They all knew failure for what it was and used it as the springboard for their next attempt.

Perhaps it is time to get back to vesting the responsibility for performance and success with the individual, instead of the team. If the individual has responsibility then there will be an entirely different dynamic in the team’s work process. It will no longer be so focused on getting everyone to “buy in” or agree on the direction to be taken. It will be more about each individual member of the team delivering on their responsibilities in alignment with the leader’s vision. As noted, those leaders never accepted failure as the final outcome and found a way.

It seemed to work pretty well for some pretty successful individuals.

Accountability, Achievement, Alignment, Efficiency, Execution, Simplification, Time Management

The Optimal Meeting Length

I think that the new business reality is that it is the rare event when something actually gets done without first having a meeting. We need to know who will be Responsible for the action to be taken, and who will be Accountable for taking it, and who will need to be Consulted before it is taken and who will be Informed of its being taken. We will spend hours in meetings in this type of analysis before we actually do anything. We seem to have evolved the business approach that having a meeting about something is the same thing as taking action.

With all this time being spent in meetings trying to decide how to split the accountability and responsibility for doing anything, it got me to thinking: What would be the optimal length for a meeting, not just one of these deciding how to take action meetings, but any meeting?

I looked. There is any number of books available on line purporting to help people run efficient and effective meetings. I was in a meeting when I Googled that so I really didn’t have the time to read any of them. Who knows some of them might actually hold the key. But since we are in the here and now I will take my kick at the can (and utilize some of my own web sleuthing) to come up with what I think is the optimal length for any meeting.

There will be a few meeting ground rules.

• For it to officially be considered a meeting it must be visual in nature. That means that you either have to be there in person, or attend via video. Audio attendance at a meeting only is a phone call / conversation regardless of how you want to describe it, and it enables everyone associated with the call to multi-task doing email, play solitaire, or any other distraction they may so choose.

• If it is a real meeting it will have an agenda. If you don’t have set topics, speakers and time frames it is not a meeting. It is an unstructured discussion, or lunch. Without an agenda you should not expect to get anything done.

• The only computer that is to be open during the meeting is that of the person presenting. Open computers enable everyone to multi-task (see the first bullet above) instead of paying attention to the topic of the meeting. It’s also discourteous to the presenter.

• There should be no refreshments of any kind at the meeting. No bagels or muffins for a morning meeting. No coffee or soft drinks. The object of the meeting participants should be to get something done, not get fed and watered. If you really have to bribe people with food to get them to come to your meeting, maybe you don’t really need to have a meeting.

• Finally, there will be no leaving the meeting and coming back for any reason. No taking phone calls. No smoking breaks. And lastly, no bathroom breaks. Get that done before or after the meeting. Don’t disrupt it by having to go.

I understand that these rules will take a lot of the fun out of meetings. People will actually have to show up and pay attention. I know this is a lot to ask, but I do think it is critical that we get back to the old outdated ways of actually getting things done. Show up. Do your work. Then go do something else.

Now when we are talking about meetings, we are talking about the internal gathering of company employees. They can be called reviews, or updates, or deep dives or just about any other euphemism that you can come up with for having people get together for a business purpose. I will refer generically to all these events as “meetings”.

I am also going to specifically exclude meetings with customers from this discussion for the time being, since those types of meetings are held only with the consent of the customer and at their discretion. Many of the ground rules I have laid out would and should apply, but some (such as food and refreshments) may not.

With the ground rules in place and the meeting defined as not including customers we can get started on how long a meeting should take, or should last, depending on how you want to look at it.

Research (Google) shows that the average person goes to the bathroom about six times a day. That same research also shows that the average person stays awake about seventeen hours a day. Using simple math that means that the average person goes to the bathroom on average once every three hours or so (actually a little less than that). I think this is a good upper bound for a meeting’s length.

Now if we use a little probability theory, because not everyone goes to the bathroom at the same time, we will find that on average for any meeting of two or more people someone will have to go within half the average time frame. That means that our maximum meeting length is now slightly less than an hour and a half.

Even better.

Now on to other research (Google) topics. Estimates for the length of human attention span are highly variable and depend on the precise definition of attention being used.

• Transient attention is a short-term response to a stimulus that temporarily attracts/distracts attention. Researchers disagree on the exact amount of human transient attention span; some say it may be as short as 8 seconds.

I think it is safe to assume that senior management is more Transient Attention oriented.

• Selective sustained attention, also known as focused attention, is the level of attention that produces the consistent results on a task over time. Some state that the average human attention span is approximately 5 minutes; others state that most healthy teenagers and adults are unable to sustain attention on one thing for more than about 20 minutes at a time, although they can choose repeatedly to re-focus on the same thing. This ability to renew attention permits people to “pay attention” to things that last for more than a few minutes, such as long movies.

Attention span, as measured by sustained attention, or the time spent continuously on task, varies with age. Older children are capable of longer periods of attention than younger children.

It doesn’t say anything about executives or managers. Insert your own experience based limit here, however my experience has taught me that they tend to align with younger children.

I have been writing this for an hour or two and I think I need to take a break. I’ll be right back….

Okay, if we accept that people can pay attention to a single topic for up to twenty minutes, but that they can continue to “refocus” on interesting topics in order to stay engaged for longer periods of time, the question now becomes; how many times can they refocus? This is where true science comes into play.

In baseball its three strikes and you’re out.

Asking people to maintain their attention, and refocus multiple times while limiting the number of bathroom breaks is a lot to ask. Asking people to refocus their attention three times for a total of sixty minutes seems to be about the limit of reasonable expectation.

There you have it. A scientific explanation. No meeting should be more than one hour long. If you can’t get it done in an hour then you probably need to re-look at what it is that you are trying to accomplish in the meeting.

I think we all knew this is where I was going with this topic. We seem to have broken our lives down into hour intervals starting with our classes in school. If you can teach Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to twenty five disinterested teenagers within a one hour class, you should be able to have far less than twenty five adult business people come to conclusion on just about any topic within the same interval.

By the way, time does indeed slow down, the closer you get to the speed of light.

This interval sits comfortably within the average need for a bathroom break, and it is short enough that it doesn’t require too many refocusing events. It is the optimal length for a meeting where the objective is to actually get something done. It enables the meeting attendees to get in, get out and move on to the next topic. By limiting the time one would expect (hope) to drive the attendees to come to a conclusion within that time.

If there are more topics to be covered they need to be broken down into other multiple one hour meetings.

Of course, none of this one hour meeting logic applies to how long a luncheon meeting should last.

Accountability, Achievement, Commissions, Compensation, Performance

It’s Not a Tip

It’s that time of year again. Spring is in the air. Birds are beginning to sing. Bees are beginning to buzz. It’s that time of the year when everyone’s thoughts turn to their favorite topic. It is the topic that they have actually been thinking about all winter. Yes, you are correct. It is time for the annual bonuses to be calculated.

People who are not fortunate enough to be sales people and on a direct sales commission plan, are usually on some sort of an annual management bonus plan. This plan can be complex or simple. It can have multiple factors associated with it, or possibly just a few. It is in essence a methodology for those that are not associated with direct sales to be able to either positively or negatively participate in the performance of the business or organization.

I have seen many different sales commission plans and many different performance incentive plans. One of the conclusions that all of this performance based compensation experience has led me to is this:

The simpler the compensation plan the better, for all involved.

It doesn’t matter if it is a commission plan based on orders for a direct sales person, or a management performance bonus based on the attainment of specific goals. The simpler the better. We need to remember that simple does not mean “easy”. Simple means that there are specific defined objectives and directly correlated rewards associated with obtaining those objectives. It has been my experience that selecting the appropriate goals and objectives that drive the desired behaviors and performance is not an easy task.

Sales commission plans are in general a little bit easier to figure out than are management incentive plans. There are usually some very specific and well defined numbers associated with the desired goals. These can include items such as orders, revenues and margins. The numbers achieved are divided by the goals and the performance percentage is hard to argue with and is well understood.

Management performance goals are a little bit trickier. The further into the organization away from senior management that you go, the smaller that individual’s ability to affect corporate performance. Based on this fact you would think that actual corporate performance should not have a great deal of affect on the majority of management incentive receivers. On the other hand everyone is contributing to the organizations performance. If the overall organization does not achieve its objectives and goals, it is difficult if not problematic to provide a management bonus to the individual team members.

However, it should also be noted that most sales people do in fact receive some portion of their commission structure rewards at performance levels that are less than one hundred percent achievement of their targets. It would not be difficult to accept the need to provide some sort of similar type management reward for partial goal attainment that works along those same lines.

The point behind all this stage setting is pretty simple. Notice how everything I have discussed up to now is based on the measured attainment of specific defined objectives. When you attain them you get paid and when you don’t attain them you don’t get paid. It should be a well understood arrangement for all involved.

As an example I will hearken back to a simpler time. A time when we were in school. A time when we did our school work and we got grades. We should all remember that time. Depending on where you went to school, a passing grade could either be a “D” or a “C”. I will note as an aside that neither of these letters were acceptable when it came time for my parents to review my report card. There were no acceptable excuses. It’s funny, but I sometimes hear the same words when speaking to my children regarding their scholastic performance. I wonder where they are coming from.

In any event, a certain numeric percentage of the available one hundred percent were assigned to these grades. That meant that regardless of how hard you may have worked, if you didn’t achieve the sixty or seventy percent threshold, you failed to achieve your objective and received no credit for the course. This was a given.

It is not unreasonable to expect any commission or bonus plan to also employ certain threshold before any compensation occurs.

Just to be clear, if commissions and bonuses are based on the achieving of specific goals, it should be expected that a certain threshold will need to be attained before any commission or bonus is paid. Below the threshold, regardless of how hard the individual works, nothing will be paid.

Many organizations follow this policy. There are also those that do not. It is best to be aware of the policy when either setting or participating in a compensation structure.

I have been in several organizations in the past where individuals have commented that they worked incredibly hard in the previous year, and that they were hoping for a good compensation check.

I couldn’t help but look at these people with awe.

I would always ask if they were aware of the specifics regarding the commission plan or the management bonus plan. They would say “yes”. I would ask if there was anything so qualitative (as opposed to quantitative) about their percentage attainment of their goals that would make it difficult for them to measure how they performed against their goals. They would say “no”. I would then ask how they could expect anything but the correctly calculated amount. They would then again reiterate how hard they worked.

I would then inform them that what they were expecting was not a calculated performance bonus, but a “tip” similar to that which is provided to someone who provides a personal service. Much like the wait-person that brings the food, but must suffer due to the poor performance of the kitchen, or the cab driver that must deal with unexpected traffic when the ride is in a hurry. They performed their work as well as could be hoped for, and even though the objectives of a hot and timely meal, or arriving in time to catch a flight were not achieved, quite possibly to factors outside of their control, they would still expect a tip for the service they rendered, especially if they worked hard.

I would then inform these people that to my knowledge most organizations do not participate in the practice of “tipping”. They pay for achievement. People need to know that going in. I think that for all of us hard work is a given and is expected. A bonus is just that. Something extra that is predicated on the measurable performance and achievement against defined goals and objectives.

It may take hard work to achieve the goals and earn a bonus. But in business if you don’t achieve your objectives you usually won’t get a “tip” just because you worked hard.

Achievement, Alternatives, Change Management, Leadership, Self Analysis, Strategy

Disposable Business

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A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a family sat despondently in their family room. They didn’t know what to do. Their color television had for some reason stopped working. Since they had never felt the need to communicate with each other while the TV had worked, they were now horribly out of practice. What to do? Things looked bleak. It was time for action.

Now here is where things get really weird. The eldest male of the family, the nominal head of the family unit (I say nominal head as this was only a fictional title. He actually reported to his mate, the most powerful woman in the universe) stood up, put the non-functioning television in the family’s means of conveyance (re: minivan) and took it to a place that was known as the repair shop.

Yes, he actually took the TV in to be repaired.

I can actually remember back to a time when this would not have been a fictional story. The reporting structure of the family is non-fiction. Every male, nominal head of a family does in fact report to their respective specific most powerful woman in the universe. The rest of this story is border line science fiction. Today when something breaks we don’t seem to fix it. We don’t even seem to be inclined to try and fix it. We just throw it away and go get another, newer one.

What used to seem to be a society based on the utilization of durable goods seems to have evolved to society based on the purchase of disposable goods. We don’t seem to want to fix anything anymore. When something breaks our first inclination is to get a new one. If that is not eminently feasible, the next step is to call someone to have them fix it. It has become the societal norm these days.

Now let’s go to go to different galaxy that is not so far away. We still have a disposable versus a repairable product mindset, but now we will be talking about businesses, not products. In this galaxy there is a business that has been performing well for many years, making products that have been well received and are well thought of by their customers. I was going to say that they made high quality, repairable televisions, but that would have been just a little excessive in my opinion.

Let’s say something now happens to this business. For whatever reason it is now no longer performing as well as it did. Its products are no longer well received nor are they well thought of by their customers. For lack of a better description, this business can now be considered broken.

Are broken businesses as disposable as broken products? How does a business actually break anyway? In a broken product, it is usually a component that fails and brings down the entire product. What happens when the components of the business are all still operating as they did when the business was not broken?

We were a culture that used to fix our own cars, change our own oil, fix our own flat tires, do our own home maintenance and improvement work. Now we just get a new replacement or call someone to come fix it. How does this culture translate to our new business models? What do we do when the current business model doesn’t work anymore?

I am fond of quoting Albert Einstein. I think he is universally recognized as a pretty bright guy, with the theory of relativity and all that. One of my favorite quotes of his, and I have used it before is:

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.”

I have met a few leaders that could actually change the way they think. There have not been many, but there have been a few. Most of the time a manager learns a way to do something successfully gets rewarded for that approach and spends the rest of their career replicating that solution set. They continue to think the same way. They just try to apply the same methodology in different situations.

Think of the old phrase:

“When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

In effect, they were once successful as a managerial hammer, and seem to have dedicated the rest of their managerial life to finding another perfect business problem nail.

Businesses are not disposable, and can invariably be repaired. Repairing a business changes it. It takes a different mindset. You can’t just call someone to come fix it. You can’t call a plumber or electrician to come fix it for you. You have to understand the plumbing and wiring of the business yourself. You have to get back to the mindset of changing your own oil and fixing your own flat tires.

Sorry for the poor metaphors, but I think you get my point.

Part of the solution may be to get a good plumber or electrician on your team, and to listen to them when they give you their recommendations and opinions.

I think this is the essence of learning to change the way you think. Sometimes you are the proper hammer for the current nail. Sometimes someone else is the proper hammer. The key is not being locked into a specific method or process of solving problems, and being able to recognize when things have changed and some different thinking is required.

A broken business is made up of many “working” people. I think that despite the trends to the contrary, they are not disposable. If they are performing poorly it is usually not because they want to perform poorly but rather they have been given poor leadership and are focusing on the wrong issues (re: nails). Disposing of them and getting new people will not fix that problem.

Remember, the thinking of those that got the business into its current state will usually not be sufficient to get it out of that state. The way the business is being managed, or those that are managing have to change. It is difficult for a leader to recognize that they must change. I think it is almost impossible for a manager to recognize that they must change.

I think our disposable product culture has taken its toll on our ability to repair broken businesses. At the risk of sounding too trite we seem to be predisposed toward disposable businesses. We seem to have evolved a mindset that if the current compliment of people cannot achieve the desired goals that we should dispose of them and replace them (like our products) with newer models.

The problem with that thinking is that it seems to be some of the thinking that may have been responsible for getting the business into its current state, and as Einstein noted, that probably won’t be sufficient for getting it out of that state.

Achievement, Business, Character, Experience, Humor

Feeling Inferior

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I like to read. My son says he would prefer to wait for the movie. Any movie. Seeing as how he is still only fifteen years old, I don’t think that there is much that I can do about that right now. What I can do is control what I read. I was under the misguided idea that occasionally I should read articles, magazines and books written by and for successful people, who like to tell us other presumably less successful people what we should do to become more successful, just like them.

I don’t think I am going to do this anymore.

Every time I read one of these success missives, I can’t help but feel inferior. It has a tendency to either depress me or drive me nuts.

I’ll demonstrate by example:

I got an email notification that my college alma mater (of all things) “liked” an article on one of those professional networking sites. I take being a mighty Lobo alumnus of the University of New Mexico very seriously so I thought it best to go check out what my alma mater deemed important enough to actually like. I clicked on the link in the notification.

Via the magic of the internet I was immediately whisked to the site of some business and technology e-zine with the appropriately titled article (and I am paraphrasing here as I don’t wish to have to provide attribution)

“27 Things that People Who Are More Successful Than You Do Every Day – Including Weekends – Before They Leave Work, That You Probably Don’t Do Which Explains Why They Are Successful And You Aren’t”

You would be surprised how close to the real title that paraphrase is.

As I said, I like to read. I read for information and enjoyment. I also believe it is something of a dying art. I mean why read when you can text or IM or as my son does, watch the movie anyway? But that is not the point. The point here is that I was already at the site. I consider myself to be reasonably successful. I have not ruled the world but I have done moderately okay. I figured I would peruse the first few topics of the list of successful attributes purely out of self interest and compare what the list said successful people do with what I do and see how much similarity there was.

Big mistake.

After furiously reading through the entire list with ever increasing disbelief to see if there was anything at all that I did at the end of the day that even remotely resembled something that a successful person was purported to have done at the end of the day, I came to the crushing conclusion that I am not fit to leave work at the end of the day, let alone work anywhere.

In case some of you have not experienced the joy that accompanies an epiphany that springs from reading an article like this, let me provide an example as a means of explanation. Most of us know how to sign our names. There are probably a few of us who don’t, and due to the penmanship challenges associated with the inability to sign their name these people are hence genetically selected to become doctors. Over time we have all probably evolved our “signature”.

Now take the pen that you normally sign your name with, put in the other hand (the hand that normally holds the paper while the first hand signs your signature) and now be told that all successful people are ambidextrous and in order for you too to be considered successful you should immediately be able to use that other hand to sign your signature as quickly, clearly and effortlessly as the first hand.

Give it a try. See how that works for you.

You now have only the slightest of inklings how it feels to read these articles about the habits, traits, customs, manners, dispositions, styles, fashions, penchants and proclivities of successful business people.

It depresses me that I don’t seem to have any resemblance at all to these so called successful people. It depresses me that I don’t spring out of bed at four o’clock in the morning prepared to shampoo the dog and rotate the tires on my wife’s car, and jog six or eight miles while thinking great world changing thoughts, all before going into the office like successful people are being depicted as doing. I am crestfallen that I don’t seem to be the appropriate whirl wind of activity in the last ten minutes of my business day closing off to-do lists, clearing my desk while simultaneously creating a workable plan to solve world hunger as I prepare to do battle with the other presumably unsuccessful souls on my commute home from the office.

It further concerns me that almost all the people that I know that I would consider to be successful also seem to have nothing in common with the ideal successful person that these articles describe.

In the past I have discussed how happiness cannot be derived from the actions and relative performance of others. I guess the corollary here is that feelings of depression and inferiority in the office should also not be the result of the actions and relative performance of others either.

Unfortunately that approach does not seem to sell articles, magazines and books. Nor does it seem like a very good way to drive people to specific web sites where their eyeballs can be assaulted by both an article describing in detail why they should by inference not consider themselves to be successful as well as those advertisers that are on that site who have specifically tailored their self-help ads to those people who after reading the article are now feeling so insecure about their relative worth and success in business.

What this epiphany does open up to me is the idea of a new opportunity to address a whole new segment of the self help article, magazine and book market. It is the segment of the market that is for the business person that is at least in part moderately successful, and wants to feel good about what they have accomplished. Think about that for a moment. Doesn’t everyone want a little recognition, reinforcement and reaffirmation that they have in fact been doing things well?

Think about the titles for these articles, magazines and books that could be generated, based on this new and previously untapped market approach:

“From Good to Better”
“Twelve Habits of the Moderately Successful”
“Congratulations on Making it to the Office on Time”
“How to Get Back From Lunch in One Hour”
“Speakerphone Etiquette in the Cube Farm”
“The Art of Aiming Low and Meeting Your Objectives”

The list could go on and on.

I understand that in this day and age that it is hyperbole that sells. As another example, in the past it used to be enough to just report the news. Now we seem to have a never ending stream of talking heads that are associated with one end of the political spectrum or the other that are now presenting their “version” of the news. Everything now has “spin” and now screams for our attention. I think the same is now the case for the plethora of business “self help” articles, magazines and books that are vying for our attention.

Each of these new and improved lists of elements associated with success seems to be more outlandish than the previous. As I noted before, based on these items it is hard to understand how I or anyone else is or can ever be considered successful. Hence the source of my concerns over these feelings of inferiority.

I think the bottom line is that when you take everything into consideration it is still things like drive, determination, attention to detail, effort, honesty, knowledge, experience, cooperation, preparation and maybe just a smidgeon of luck that are some of the determining factors in success. These concepts are not particularly exciting and don’t promise any secret short cuts to success. Maybe that explains why there doesn’t seem to be a market for a book titled:

“Be Smart, Work Hard, Perform Well and Move Ahead”

Perhaps another answer to being considered a success is to write a book that tells other people what they should do in order to be considered a success.

Achievement, Data, Leadership, Metrics, Performance

Statistics and Performance

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I always thought that Mark Twain was purported to be the author of one of my favorite quotes:

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

I have come to find out that in his own autobiography Twain attributed this quote to a nineteenth century British statesman and former Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. This fact perplexed me slightly so I continued my research a little further using those modern bastions of all knowledge, Google and Wikipedia. After an exhaustive five minute search I found that the general consensus is that no one knows for certain who the author of one of my favorite quotes is. This fact will make it reasonably difficult to give attribution in the future should the opportunity to use it come up again.

Be that as it may, it may be time for me to take the slightest exception with one of my favorite quotes. When you are looking at the performance of a business, the numbers don’t lie. Now the way the numbers are arranged can sometimes be confusing or even misleading, so the business leader needs to be aware and careful.

I don’t say this too loud or too often, but I think I may understand numbers reasonably well. Physics, Mathematics, Finance, I have studied them all. And believe it or not, to one extent or another they are all numbers based disciplines. In addition to this degreed book learning, I have had what could almost be called a moderately useful stint of practical numerical application in the business world.

I sometimes use this unbridled numerical capability and familiarity to complete the most difficult of Sudoku number puzzles in the USA Today newspaper, or various in flight airline magazines. Just to stay in practice and make sure that I still “have it”.

Since it appears that this is going to be a quote based discussion, I might as well continue in that vein. Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician (hence the source of the physicians “Hippocratic Oath”) said:

“There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.”

I think the corollary here is that if it cannot be expressed in numbers in business it is not fact, it is opinion. I have written and spoken in the past about the need for leaders in the business world to become increasingly more familiar with “numbers” of business as they matriculate up the leadership ladder. There may have been past instances of corporate wizardry where a leader intuitively knew what needed to be done (maybe Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates fall into this category), but their moves were invariably backed up by the analysis (numbers) justifying their moves. For the rest of us, as Robert McNamara said:

“Get the data.”

While I am muddling along focusing on equating science, facts and numbers, I probably should pay at least some heed to the power of opinion. While the truth may be out there, it will be people’s opinion of it that drives its valuation. As John Maynard Keynes, a man who is credited with some of the very foundations of economic theory (think of the source of Keynesian Theory) said:

“A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.”

Okay, enough quotation roulette. I hope you get my point, whatever it was.

Now back to the topic; in the business world, the proper statistics, when properly presented and interpreted are invariably a good indicator of business performance. That is correct. Statistics, which are the indicators associated with past performance, are usually good indicators of future performance. I understand that Mark Twain, Benjamin Disraeli and whoever actually created one of my favorite quotes regarding statistics are all probably collectively grumbling, wherever they are, but this is the case.

This brings us to probably the most common and clichéd quote in this dialog:

“Past Performance is Not Necessarily Indicative of Future Results”

We have all probably seen it or read it on just about any investment prospectus ever written. Why is it there? To make sure that we all know that just because an investment that has done well in the past does not mean that it will continue to perform, or do as well in the future. Investment firms don’t want anyone to cry “foul” if they have not interpreted the statistics properly or if a statistical performance anomaly occurs in the market. So with this in mind I now ask the following question:

When we have the choice of making an investment, or are reviewing the continuation of an existing investment, which investment alternatives do we choose: those that have done well in the past, or those that have done poorly in the past?

All things being equal, and pursuing an intelligent risk diversification portfolio, understanding long term investment return and interest rates, blah, blah, blah…..we almost always pick the one that has done well in the past expecting (hoping) that all things being equal it will continue to exhibit the same performance traits going forward. We very rarely select the one that has been performing relatively poorly expecting (hoping) that it is going to turn around. Why do you suppose that is?

Welcome to the world of statistics. You have taken the data points associated with performance in the past, extrapolated the line or curve forward and made a choice and prediction about the future. Statistically speaking that is probably the correct choice. But this isn’t a discussion about investments. It is a discussion about business. And the same exact concepts apply.

Herein lies a rub. Statistics can only be misleading if you don’t understand the underlying numbers. Hence my predilection and continued haranguing regarding the necessity of leaders being numerically literate. Remember there is another quote that may also be incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain:

“Figures don’t lie, but liars do figure.”

The author of this quote also appears to be shrouded in the past as well, but like all the other good quotes of the period, it was attributed to Twain.

Let’s look at a simple statistical example to make my point. Let’s say that in the next measurement period (it doesn’t matter how long the period is) that a business sells one more product unit than it did the previous measurement period. This is good right?

Basically the answer is “yes” selling more, any more is usually always good, but how good? If it is your first measurement period in business, it’s hard to say how good without more data (statistics). If you only sold one unit the last period, and then you sell two units this period, that is sales growth, but it is still difficult to evaluate without more data. If you sold a thousand units last period, then one more this period might not be statistically important.

On the other hand all of those responses could be changed depending on the cost and value of the product being sold. If you are selling nuclear power plants as opposed to canned hams, a single unit growth in sales could be seen as spectacular, whereas the sale of a single additional canned ham might not be a cause for much celebration.

Statistically speaking selling one more than nothing is infinite sales growth but it is still only one unit. Selling one more than one is one hundred percent growth, but it is still only two units. Selling one more than one thousand is only one tenth of a percent growth. All represent the same one unit growth, but can be represented significantly differently in the statistical growth example. The wary leader needs to always be aware of how statistics are being used and the story that is trying to be portrayed.

Again, when using data and statistics unless a business can specifically quantify what changes it is going to make and how those changes are going to be translated into performance, like your investment decisions discussed earlier, you would expect the business to perform very much in the future as it is doing today. It is through this process that the market valuates companies, and it is through this process that companies provide their future forecasts of performance.

Leaders always need to be aware that statistics are extensions of the data. They are the way that the data is being presented and interpreted. The data is the fact. It is the consistency of the statistic, the interpretation of the data that is the key. Understanding the underlying numbers, and the analysis and statistics associated with them is required and essential for the successful leadership of the business. To not be able to do so is to be at the mercy of those that do.

Because as Mark Twain also (and finally) said (and this one is actually directly attributed to him):

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

Achievement, Commitment, Performance, Talent

Recognizing Talent Versus Commitment

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There is an old “music” joke that goes:
Who is that guy standing around with the musicians?
The bass player.
I know this joke because I am a bass player; or rather I try to be a bass player. I took many years of lessons. I have studied, understand and appreciate much of music theory. I practice. I am committed. I have worked to try and turn myself into a serviceable bass player. I enjoy all of it. There is only one thing holding me back from being a truly outstanding bass player.

Talent.

I have only a modicum of musical talent. I understand this, and it doesn’t bother me a bit. I love to play. It just makes me want to work at it that much harder. I take what I have and try to get the most I can out of it. Whether it is rehearsing with the band or playing on stage at the last jazz festival, I really like doing what I am doing. The challenge to perform is always there.

I have seen real musicians. Those with real talent. Their ability to learn, play and adapt to the music is amazing. The ease with which they play and perform is amazing. If at all possible, I always try to be in organizations (bands) where I am challenged to play and perform with those that are more talented than I am. Playing with musicians that are more talented than I am has made me in turn a better musician as well.

I once asked the leader of one of those bands that I played in why he selected me as the bassist when there were other bassists with more talent available to him. His response has stuck with me.

He said that sometimes it wasn’t all about talent. There also had to be a commitment and that sometimes the level of commitment could outweigh the level of talent. He said not to get him wrong and that there had to be a reasonable level of talent and ability, but those that work hard and are committed can also perform to very high levels in the right environment. He was looking at the overall sound, arrangement and structure of the band, not just the talent level of each of the members.

I was very pleased to hear this as it gave me additional impetus to continue to work hard, and practice in the effort to improve.

So what does this story about my musical aspirations and talent level have to do with business? I think it points out that there are multiple dimensions to the structure of a business team, just as there are to a musical combo. While talent and aptitude are key components of each team member’s makeup, there are others, such as commitment, that come into play when assessing the team.

This band leader had recognized that there was both a minimum acceptable talent level he was looking for and a commitment level that he wanted. Once we had all demonstrated that we all had the requisite skill levels, with some having more than others, it became a question of other less definable considerations to be associated with the selection process. When you think about it, business operates in much the same way.

A while ago I noted how many of the military leaders throughout our history were not necessarily identified as the most talented or smartest members of their respective military training academies. Yet somehow they advanced to the highest levels of their selected disciplines ahead of those that were at least initially more highly regarded and supposedly more talented. Again all of them obviously had the requisite skill levels, but it was something else that enabled those with supposedly less talent to advance.

I am also a professional hockey fan. I was not particularly a hockey fan when I was younger, but have become much more so a fan as I have grown to understand the game. I now regard the game as an elegant combination of speed and skill where those that may not be genetically selected specifically because of their height or size (as in some other professional sports) can compete.

I just recently read an article written by a hockey scout on what they look for when they are scouting young hockey players as potential draft choices or future professional hockey players. Again some level of talent is always a minimum required baseline, but what they said they looked for in a hockey prospect was what they called the “compete level”. How hard did the skate? How hard did they work? How hard did they battle in competitive situations? Did they take it easy sometimes or did they play hard all the time?

This again sounded suspiciously like assessing their commitment level. They wanted to know if the prospect was getting by on just their talent level or did they also try to outwork the competition? Having the talent and ability to succeed does not necessarily mean you have the desire to compete at such a level in order to succeed. When the time comes and you face a competitor with a similar talent level it will be some other factor, such as commitment that will decide the outcome.

Business, sports and even music are all competitive structures. As you progress through each of them there is a continual selection process that goes on. The further you go, the higher the talent level of all participants, and it becomes something else that separates the participants.

In music you start out at the very lowest levels as a beginner. You take lessons and work at it and practice. If you have talent, stay with it and play well enough you can get to play at amateur and even professional levels. It can be a lot of fun. It is for me at least. It is the rare talent that gets combined with the proper level of high commitment that makes music that is played on the radio, or gets to play for the large paying audiences.

In hockey you start out in the minor leagues or in schools, and again it is the rare combination of talent and “compete level” that get combined that enable the player to progress through the various levels of minor leagues and make it to the highest levels of professional hockey. It is interesting in that there are players in the league that are recognized for their talent levels, and there are players that are recognized for their compete level, and there are very, very few that are recognized for both.

In business the progression from entry level to business leader also has several different levels of responsibility that you must pass through. At each level there is an almost requisite talent level that all participants must have, otherwise they would not be there. It is here that their commitment or “compete level” will begin to differentiate them. Can they get the job done? Do they get the job done? Why or why not?

It has been my experience that much of this commitment level manifests itself in the level of preparation that an individual brings to their assignment. Have they done the preparatory work? Can they anticipate and prepare an answer to the questions that they will invariably be asked?

As I have noted in the past, I see several parallels between music and business. In music my commitment level drives me to practice rehearse and prepare so that when the time comes to step on the stage in front of an audience, I can be confident in my performance. In business it is the preparation and ground work that are the manifestation of this type of commitment. Anyone can step to the front of the room and present slides to the audience, but it is those that are committed that have taken the time to understand and anticipate the questions and the next steps that are confident in their performance.

Despite all the practice and preparation, I still get a little nervous every time I go up in front of an audience. I don’t suspect that I will ever lose that.