by Charles Plant | Jan 7, 2013 | Leaders
Yes I know it is a few days late but I suspect that people are only now getting back to work in earnest. I wanted to start the new year by telling a story of a friend’s father, a man who is 88 years old.
My friend will often go over to his father’s place and find he is eating something new, something strange like creamed spinach. It turns out that his father long ago decided that he would do whatever is necessary to live a long and healthy life and so if some research said that eating creamed spinach would make you live a longer and healthier life, he’ll start eating creamed spinach.
The point isn’t about creamed spinach but that his father is very goal oriented and has long believed that you get somewhere in life by setting goals. Every year since he was very young he has written out his goals for the year and every year at the end of the year he ticks off those goals he accomplished.
He started life in a family of modest means and a goal he set one year was to buy a winter coat. Another goal one year was to make two friends. Over these many years, this man has written down and kept a record of his annual goals thus comprising a heart warming and inspirational history of a man’s desire to live a happy, long, productive life.
Most of his friends have passed away and he relies on support from his family but he still at 88, starts the year by setting goals.
by Charles Plant | Dec 21, 2012 | Leadership Development
I’ve noticed that I haven’t been posting as many blogs as I should in the last few weeks. I’m obviously disengaged.
For some reason in Canada, the “end of year holiday season” (formerly known as Christmas) has grown longer and longer every year. Just like in the summer months (still known as July and August) people tend to wind down in December, making the work year up here only nine months long.
Good thing too because you can’t be engaged all the time. Everyone needs a little down time to counterbalance the frenetic times. You need time to refresh and recharge, connect with co-workers on a more casual level, and just generally goof off. (I’m very good at goofing off.)
So if you’re still running around like a banshee (no disrespect to banshees intended) take a break, relax and re-engage next year.
Happy Holidays.
by Charles Plant | Dec 19, 2012 | Leadership Development, Literature Review
It’s hard to soar with the eagles when you’re surrounded by turkeys.
Do you have a passion for quality, in product, process, or people? If you don’t then why not? Is it because you don’t really care about your company’s mission, you’re turned off by a boss who doesn’t care, or you’re surrounded by people who don’t care?
If you find yourself disengaged then either it’s time to step up to the plate and engage those around you or it’s time to move.
Employee engagement is the key to engaged customers and better results.
If you don’t believe me then perhaps you’ll believe the Gallup Organization who says it well in this post.
by Charles Plant | Dec 14, 2012 | Leadership Development
For the last ninety days I’ve been out talking to people about how Material Minds can help them. I’ve talked to more than 60 people in that time and in the process, finally developed a value proposition that I think will work.
You can check what I ended up with on our website.
In the process, I’ve learned more about value propositions than I ever knew before. I suspect that most companies talk about what they offer and how they offer it. That seems to be the positioning most often taken in our industry.
When I started this journey, I defined what we did by the technology we use. We create Digital Media including videos, articles, and exercises, hosted online in a Learning management System. So I started this adventure talking about the technology,why our technology was better than everyone else’s. That is one of our big differentiators, the fact that we use digital media when almost no one else does. Big deal. So what?
As I continued meeting with people I changed what I talked about to discuss not the technology but instead about our service, what we do. We do Leadership development using Digital Media. This is the positioning that most in the Leadership Development industry use and they usually talk about it in terms of the leadership style they advocate or some theory they have on what makes a good leader. Once again, big deal. So what?
Finally, I clued in to a better approach. (I’m slow at picking this stuff up.) Now I’m talking about the results we get. We create measurable increases in Return on People. Funny thing about it is that virtually no one else in the industry talks about quantifiable results from training or leadership development. It’s the big elephant in the room. Everyone does leadership development but they almost never measure their results.
When it comes down to it, that’s all that matters, what results you get. It doesn’t matter to a prospective client what technology you use. It doesn’t matter what your process or service is. It only matters what results you get.
And one more thought on the matter, the results you get have to be measurable and they have to tie into metrics that matter for the company you’re selling to. Otherwise you can’t explain what value you bring, what your value proposition is.
by Charles Plant | Dec 11, 2012 | Leaders, Leadership Development
If you read anything on goal setting it will say that after you establish some goals you’ll need to make a plan. But if you look back over your life to date, can you name five really significant things that you accomplished as a result of a detailed plan?
I suspect that many of us wander through life with very loose plans, some of which may be written down but most of which reside in our minds. I have never been a proponent of detailed planning but as I wander from one objective to another I wonder if perhaps I’ve given too little attention to planning.
In one of my recent nocturnal net surfing forays (without a plan) I blundered upon a write-up on Thomas Edison. You know, prolific inventor, rabid entrepreneur, holder of 1,093 patents etc. etc.
What I didn’t know about Edison was that he was a rabid planner. Apparently he made detailed plans for every trial and faithfully recorded both the plans and the results in notebooks. While he was meticulous and scientific, he wasn’t averse to trying inspired guesswork. What was key to his success though was that as he said it “I never did anything by accident.”
So maybe the rest of us have been wrong. Maybe we’ve ended up where we are mostly through accident because we didn’t have detailed plans. Maybe if we had been better planners we would have ended up more like Edison.
Yes I know it is a few days late but I suspect that people are only now getting back to work in earnest. I wanted to start the new year by telling a story of a friend’s father, a man who is 88 years old.
