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Mental Telepathy

Inevitably whenever I’m watching a sports event on television, I’ll make a comment at a critical moment and the announcer immediately repeats it. Last night, just before Boise State went on its BCS-saving last-minute touchdown drive, I started singing, “Felix the cat, the wonderful wonderful cat… whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks.” Within five seconds, Kirk Herbstreit said, “I wonder if the Broncos will reach into their bag of tricks?” My son laughed and said: “Do you have a microphone directly into their headsets?” My response: “I spent 15 years producing those games and the last 15 watching them as a fan, so I sort of know what they’re thinking.”

College football is my passion. Amidst mowing the lawn, cleaning the garage, doing ‘Zen and the art of automobile maintenance’ on our 10-year-old Camry, swimming and enjoying quality family togetherness this Labor Day weekend, I found time to watch ‘College Game Day’ and five football games. That’s a lot of moments to figure out what’s going on and where the announcers will take things.

The opportunity here in business is to climb into the heads of your customers (both internal and external ones) – and fully understand situations from their perspectives. Too often, leaders are so caught up in how you personally see things that you fail to consider what the view looks like from the other side of the table, or counter, or phone line, or desk. Yet stepping outside your own narrow scope opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Try it – let go of your bias – and you’ll discover the ability to anticipate what’s coming next. It’s a winning strategy in any game.

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This Will Only Hurt For A Minute

I spent a lot of hours in doctor’s offices the past few weeks – and not once did it have to do with being sick. First, there was the annual physical. Then it was off to the ‘now that you’re 50 let’s get a baseline since your father died of a heart attack’ CT scan. Next was the ‘it’s been awhile, so you need to have another colonoscopy’ consultation – to be followed soon by the actual procedure. In between was my yearly eye exam.

Results? My body is fine, my heart even better and my left eye actually improved. I’m confident the colonoscopy will show all’s clear on the southern front.

Of course, while visiting multiple medical facilities, I paid close attention to just how efficiently (or not) they operate.

My longest wait was one hour at my primary physician. I’m use to that having gone to him for the past 12 years: he has multiple offices and is only in our neighborhood one day a week, so it’s always crowded. He did spend more than an hour with me, which made the initial delay worthwhile. (The shortest wait was three minutes at the CT scanning location. Their systems are as efficient as In-N-Out Burger.)

Nurses have really difficult jobs, so I typically give them a break. There’s a lot of stress and people aren’t always polite. That said, three of them provided less-than-stellar follow-up service. I had to call my doctor’s nurse a couple of times to get test results. The eye doctor’s nurse ordered the wrong contacts, so I had to go back and exchange them. Twice I contacted the gastroenterologist and left messages, and despite the ‘she’ll call you back this afternoon’ promise… I’m still waiting.

My guess is doctors have no idea how their employees (read: health care providers) treat patients (read: customers). It’s in one waiting room and out the other for the highest educated and highest compensated person in those organizations. However, from an image standpoint, doctors would be wise to occasionally ask patients what they think of the service. Of course, it’s the same thing in your business, isn’t it? Have you done that lately?

BTW… I also went to the dentist last month. All is good – although don’t get me started on the sound of that electric cleaning utensil hygienists are using these days. Rrrrrrrrrrr

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Organizing Results

While facilitating a client’s recent executive leadership retreat, one of the attendees asked me: “So how do you stay on top of your priorities and get things done?” Many in the room expressed a similar interest in this topic, and they agreed to start 30 minutes early the next morning to create some extra time for me to share these techniques:

Make a list and check it often – Each Sunday night or first thing Monday morning I rewrite a one-page tracking sheet of everything that’s a major ‘Rock’ priority. This paper sits on the left-hand corner of my desk for the rest of the week, and it’s my way to keep focused on the big picture items that otherwise might be forgotten during the hours of a crowded day. This means the ‘not urgent and important’ quadrant that Covey identified never strays too far out of my mind.

Don’t let e-mail control your life – Once you open your In Box in the morning, you’re no longer in control of your day. So, I spend an hour working on other things before checking e-mail and diving into the fires that come with being a leader. (Note: read my post titled “Setting Priorities” on July 15th for more on this including my “Dr Pepper Approach.”)

Prioritize your piles – My goal is to start and end each day with a clean desk, and I’m probably successful 75 percent of the time. This means staying organized and being efficient. I have two types of current files: ‘clients’ that exist in the desk drawer to my right and ‘events’ that rest on the credenza to my left. I pull out client files the morning of their coaching sessions and place them in order by appointment time. The event files are clear project folders that I implement for all the other things we’re working on in our business. Each day I prioritize these from top to bottom, so I’m always focusing on the most important project first.

In addition to these, I utilize my calendar to block Genius Time for such things as writing this blog or reaching out to prospects. I also prioritize my workday by sequencing ‘these are the things I absolutely have to get done before I go home.’ One mental approach that works for me is to treat every day like it’s the day before I leave on vacation. I find it’s much easier to complete tasks and hit deadlines that way.

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Thinking Young

So I guess this is the way it’s going to be from here on out. Having turned 50 in June, I have received at least three direct mail offers in the last few months from AARP about joining their organization. Really? I have 10 more consecutive years of kids’ college tuition to pay – having only completed the first two. Plus, after the ‘lost decade’ of investment earnings, any thoughts of retirement aren’t circling around my head.

The good news is I can still run five miles in under 43 minutes – and my endurance continues to increase in the swimming class I began 10 weeks ago. I had a heart CT scan two weeks ago that came back perfectly fine, and later this month there’s that wonderful procedure us older folks get to enjoy called a colonoscopy. Ah, the fun that comes with the changing of the calendar.

At the recent Pro Football Hall of Fame ceremony, the first speaker was former Detroit Lions defensive back Dick LeBeau, who started his playing career the year before I was born and retired form the NFL in 1972. He’s spent the past 38 seasons as a coach and earned two Super Bowl rings this decade as defensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Dick LeBeau will be 73 years old in a few weeks. He looks 20 years younger, and so far this year has shot his age on the golf course 18 times. The final minutes of his induction speech really impacted me… and I repeat them here in hopes they’ll touch you too:

“Life is for living, folks. Don’t let a number be anything other than a number. Don’t let somebody tell you that you’re too old to do this or too old to do that. Stay in life. Life is a gift. It’s a joy. Don’t drop out of it. Don’t let somebody else tell you and don’t let your mind tell you.

If I would have gotten out of my life’s work at 65 or 67, when they say is the age of retirement, here is what I would have missed, folks. I would have missed not one but two World Championship football teams that I got to be a part of…. I got to be a part of a number one defense that statistically had the lowest numbers in the last 35 or 40 years. I had my number retired from my high school. Had a building named after me in my hometown. I made the Detroit Lions all 75-year team. I was accepted into the Ohio State University Athletic Hall of Fame. Now tonight I guess when I sit down, get off this speaking, which I’m gonna do, I’ll be in the NFL Hall of Fame.

My mother always said, ‘Onward and upward, age is just a number.’ God love y’all. Thank you.”

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Revised Planning

Last week I facilitated the executive leadership team retreat of a client for the second year in a row. As the CEO concluded his opening remarks, he turned to me and said, “David, you should feel really proud we invited you back, since we accomplished very little coming off of last year’s meeting. That may be a first in the history of facilitating.”

Obviously, this created an immediate opportunity to discuss what didn’t happen… and to identify how the team – which has several new members – will change its approach this time around. Through this opening discussion the team identified 26 ‘traps’ that had them end up hitting a nice ground rule double instead of a home run. Listed among these disruptions were: too many things to focus on at once; operating in silos instead of joining together; allowing ‘fires’ to displace working the plan; and, poor communication across the organization.

This was a wonderful dialogue that moved us through what didn’t happen and got everyone’s cards on the table right off the bat. In fact, when we broke for lunch that first morning, I asked them to come back prepared to answer that they had ‘left the past behind’ and are ‘all-in’ going forward.

Ultimately, we ended day two with a clear path for what the new plan is, what steps they will each take to complete their part and how they intend to hold each other accountable. We put in place ‘check-in’ dates where they will meet regularly to provide updates on progress, so they don’t wait until the last minute to do things. Most importantly, I met individually with the CEO and coached him on how to stay ‘on top of the pyramid’ thinking big picture while engaging his leaders at the ‘ground level’ to keep them focused on achieving desired outcomes.

This time I think we got it right, and they’re going to soar. Perhaps they might invite me back again next year.

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