So, Here's My Story...

Do you ever get data that has historically proven accurate and helpful, but just ignored it because…you wanted to? How do you determine when to listen to recommendations, and when to follow your intuition? Why is that important for business?  Business owners get a lot of information, and it can sometimes be interesting to simply say, “that’s interesting” and move on. But when we put effort into getting reliable metrics and then continuously ignore them, it might require closer inspection.  This past year has been all about uncertainty in business and demonstrating that perhaps we are capable of navigating without so much data and certainty.  And…if good data is telling you something that goes against what you think feels right, it’s worth considering.  As GPS demonstrates, sometimes even the best data has flaws and you’ll need to override the advice given. But when you find yourself consistently ignoring the suggestions given, it is worth considering if you really want any of that data at all. Sometimes you h

How do you balance too many rules with too few? How about exceptions? And where do you fall on Methodists and Evil Kevin? Let’s talk about all of that (and more!) Why is that important for business?  It is easy to overdo or underdo rules and regulations. It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that your team does not need rules because they can be trusted. But your team won’t always be the same, both because situations in their lives will change, and your team will change over time. Assuming best intentions is wonderful, but you also have to ask, “what’s at risk?” You might worry that rules assume everyone is bad or insinuate distrust. But they also protect your employees. And it warrants asking what the maximum level of threat is and if it warrants rules to protect you and the employee. There is a sweet spot in the middle where rules don’t inhibit the behaviour you do want, while not discouraging the behaviours you wish to see less of. Rules are there to put guardrails on things, but you can always step

Is there a generational divide in your business or place of work? Leaning into the differences – and the superpowers – of each generation can make your business stronger. For instance, how can you exploit the Gen X superpower of tolerating boredom? Let’s talk about that.  Why is that important for business?  Usually, we give a little too much credence and attention to the differences between the generations. But there are differences. In business especially, those differences can actually help, if you aren’t afraid to focus on the strengths and shape the role to fit those strengths. Whether people are primed for the world they will have to usher in, or are shaped by the changing world they occupy, each generation has different skill sets that, instead of mocked, can be incorporated to make them even better at their jobs.  How do you cater to the innate tendencies of each generation? How often do you roll your eyes instead of thinking how that generational trait might be a skill? And where do you need to make

Billy Joel and Hamilton sang about it, but what is your relationship with satisfaction? How can entrepreneurs, with their knack for always striving, develop a relationship with satisfaction, and is it even important to do that?  Why is that important for business?  Is there an incompatibility with entrepreneurship/business leadership and being satisfied? Is it a cardinal sin to say, “yeah I’m good”, or is that foolish? Satisfaction lives on a spectrum, and even if it might not be necessary for an entrepreneur to find their way all the way to contentment, it might be important to develop the capacity to at least appreciate. One version of an unhealthy relationship with satisfaction is not even being able to notice the point where you achieve a goal. But it is also true that not a lot of entrepreneurs come at life with an abundance of satisfaction – the itch for striving might be a necessity for this kind of leadership.  So how do you cultivate a healthy relationship with satisfaction, and do you think it’s eve

Ever been so focused on the planning that you don’t take into account the delivery method? Ah, the lessons we learn from a garbage bag full of salad, lobster-chip cookies, and acres of pizza.  Why is that important for business?  This issue – considering the delivery method – has come up a lot in business in 2020, largely because of remote working. When you have a way of doing something – launching a strategic plan before a holiday party, when everyone is together, for instance – and you don’t consider the change in delivery mechanism (i.e. you didn’t consider that it would be different to do this on Zoom), the outcome can suffer. And this change in delivery method can really get people tied up in knots about any kind of planning.  But we also need to be aware of where we are using COVID as an excuse to do nothing. Instead of just thinking about how it will be less in these circumstances, we need to focus on how it will just be different. When you struggle to see the possibilities, it can help to imagine your

There is a big difference between how the haves and the have nots think and talk about money, access and resources. Those differences show up in your business, too, and we should talk about it.  Why is that important for business?  Just as rich people teach their kids different things about money than poor and middle-class parents, so to do these differences show up in businesses, especially in management teams and start-ups. There is a difference between approach and culture, and mindset about accessing resources and advice. It is practically the birthplace of “you don’t know what you don’t know”. Certain options never even occur to people who aren’t used to thinking of those options. When you don’t even know what is possible, it’s hard to know what questions to ask.  People who are accustomed to financial and business success have more access to resources, yes, but the bigger piece might be the mindset piece. It can be seductive to want to feel like the smartest person in the room, but if you are, you are i

“Tell me the truth” – are there any four words more fraught with potential discord than those?  But if someone asks you a “tell me the truth” question, it’s important to consider that might not be the question you should be answering at all. Why is that important for business?  If someone asks you a “tell me the truth” question in business, there is the potential to do a lot of damage, regardless how you answer. But almost always, there is an opportunity to ask more questions and gain more clarity, without ever answering the original question. Be curious and find out what they are really asking before you answer. When you ask the right questions, you can help bring them to the conclusion they want to reach, without risking the relationship. It can be the difference between “you’re right” and “that’s right”. The honesty question is the wrong first question - the first question should be other questions. It might be the question laid on the table, but it is not the question that needs to be picked up. If you ke

If you’ve ever seen a debate about student loan forgiveness, then you’ve heard some version of, “I had to pay my loan back, so should they.” But at what point does “fairness” become lack of leadership, and focusing on individuals cripple a system? Why is that important for business?  To be successful, companies have to be nimble and not beholden to the past. At the same time, we have to be careful not to blithely dismiss or alienate those who have concerns – is there merit in the process (like a chick needing the struggle of hatching to develop) or is it merely an issue of “I suffered, so should you.”  If there is an opportunity to fix a systemic issue in your business that might be holding people back from exceling, personal experiences shouldn’t trump the needs of the company. It is the responsibility of a leader to help people grow in how they think about an organization. If senior people are too side-tracked by things remaining the same as they experienced, it is a signal that you have work to do. You wil

For a lot of companies, bonus season is coming up. Because this has been an especially strange year, it feels extra challenging to balance the desire to show your people they are valued, while still being responsible to the future needs of your business in uncertain times. Essentially, this episode is all about helping Eliot make decisions, but we get to come along for the ride.   Why is that important for business?  Considering how strange and unprecedented the events of 2020 have been, forecasting the cash reserve needs of 2021 feels extra daunting. And there has also been lots of opportunity for the best people on your team to show how very valuable they are this year. Saving for the unknown that is next year is responsible but can also make it more challenging to show staff they are valued. You want to be a bright spot for those that made this year better, and you want to make sure they have a job in the future.  It is important to recognize that the assumption that people won’t feel valued if they don’t

Remember snow days? Remember how exciting it was to have that found day? It’s important to find ways to incorporate these experiences into your lives, even when everything is virtual.  Why is that important for business?  It’s also important to create these experiences – these blips of normality or shared experience – in your business as well. We talk about the quantitative parts of business often, but the qualitative experience is just as important – how people feel is not something to be overlooked. Culture for companies is often talked about as an “other” thing that lives in its own room, when it is more like interstitial tissue woven through everything.  Sometimes, it is as simple as refusing to forfeit some of the joy that come with normality.  Especially as go into winter, with the weight of not having many things to look forward to and lacking spontaneous found joys that come with semi-quarantine, we have to be mindful about how to incorporate snow day energy into our businesses and our lives. We need

What can a peach the size of your face teach you about expectations? Let’s discuss! W How do you manage expectations to avoid disappointment, while avoiding complacency? How do you go from the perfect peach, to whatever it is that they sell at the grocery store.    These are the questions we tackle in this episode, and you can listen here. hy is that important for business?  When you have the perfect peach as a child, every other peach will reliably be a disappointment. When you have an amazing first experience, you often have to contend with unmet expectations, so how do you manage those expectations, in life and business, so you aren’t perpetually disappointed.  “Satisfied” can sometimes feel like a dangerous word. How can you give conscious thought to creating an experience for our staff, for instance, so they are as happy with the decision they made on day 418 as they were on day 1? How do we balance desire and expectation with satisfaction, while avoiding disappointment? Satisfaction feels like it can

This episode will be released on a pretty significant voting day in the U.S., which gets us thinking about how voting (and NOT voting) relates to business. How do you get people to tell you what they think, what they want, if they have lost faith that it will make a difference? And the biggest question of all – how can we use rats to tell this story? Why is that important for business?  Voting is an act of hope. But if you don’t think your vote matters, or you don’t think anyone’s vote matters (because the people at the top will do what they want anyway), you can get disillusioned in the process. The same can happen in a business. Whether it’s customers or employees or anyone else involved in your business, if people think their voice doesn’t matter, you can miss vital information.  So how do you reach people who don’t vote, or speak up?  The most honest place to look – does their vote actually count? Do you really want to hear from them, or do you just want to feel good that you heard from everybody? If you

Rant alert! In this episode, we talk about the frustrating ways that businesses make it hard for us to give them our money, and the importance of keeping things easy and keeping the customer in mind.  Why is that important for business?  When a company (even *EEK* your company) doesn’t seem to understand the problem that we are attempting to solve, nor how they are going to solve the problem, it makes it hard to give them our money.  And it’s an important reminder to make sure you look at your business from the client’s point of view. Are you repeatedly getting the same questions, or repeatedly having to explain the same things? That’s a clue that you need to look at that part of your process and make it easier.  Like we talked about in Episode 2, Rule #1: make it easy for people to do what you want them to do.  Anticipate what your customers need by seeing the experience as much as possible through their eyes. And where you can’t anticipate, respond to their struggles as something that isn’t about them, but

We cheat on our own podcast for a story this week, as we talk about This American Life, North Korea’s former leader Kim Jong-il, creativity and risk.  Why is that important for business?  This episode references the This American Life podcast episode, Same Bed, Different Dreams https://www.thisamericanlife.org/718/same-bed-different-dreams If, like Kim Jong-il, you are finding your people lack creativity, consider where you are making it unsafe to be creative. Perhaps there is too much structure, too little structure, or perhaps your people believe it is better to do something safe and crappy than to be sorry for taking a risk. And the risk doesn’t even have to seem dramatic – it doesn’t have to involve a single dictator to be a deterrent. But you do have to help your people embrace the risk of being sorry so they can push past crappy and safe.  While it might not be wise to create a culture that courts all kinds of failure, you need to encourage it in spaces that require creativity. You have to recognize and

Ever written a whole story based on a flash of behaviour from someone else? In a twist of irony, in this episode, we explore the process of writing a story about someone else writing a story about us!  Why is that important for business?  So much of our miscommunications in business and in life are based on these imagined stories based on other people’s behaviours. It is much like how conspiracy theories are built – we emotionally organize things that don’t make sense. But when we respond this way, we are forgetting the question mark; we are forgetting to be curious. We skip past all of the unknowns and jump right to certainty. And often, we are filling in the storyline with our own fears.  When you lose the question mark, you lose a great deal of your ability to understand.  There is great power in writing your own story, but with that power comes great responsibility.  What story do you want to tell? So, that's our story... now, we want to hear yours! Pull up a chair and join the conversation in our Faceboo

Received some negative feedback? Before you react or internalize the feedback, we have a few things to say that may change your mind about what it means.  Why is that important for business?  In business, you are bound to get feedback, solicited or not. And some of it is bound to be negative. If you are someone who cares about delivering value and not disappointing people, your instinct might be to internalize that feedback and make changes to aspects of your business. But there are a few things you should consider first.  Are these outliers? Determining whether the feedback, whether incredibly negative or incredibly positive, exist only on the margins is important context you need to give them. What percentage of the whole do they represent? Are you reacting to 6 reviews out of 50 as if they are the whole truth? The truth is nuanced and is not shaped just by people who have decided to speak up. Also, unless it is mandatory, you aren’t going to hear from the large middle of people who are satisfied. People gi

You get an email from a customer demanding you fire an employee for something you don’t think is wrong. How do you handle it? Let’s talk about it.  Why is that important for business?  The line between private and business is increasingly blurring, and companies are being forced into taking stands. It is important, but it also makes business a lot more complicated. Personal views are not longer tidily kept in the background when it comes to business.  There is a distinction that needs to be made between a differing on viewpoints, and a differing on moral or ethical beliefs when you are deciding what positions you will be willing to lose customers over. But how ever you slice it, we are being forced into having these conversations, whether you think you want to or not.  Sooner or later, it will be incumbent on most leaders to figure out where their lines are and how they are going to react to the non-business side of life. It is harder and harder not to pick a side.  This collision of business and personal is

A tomato failing to ripen because it is stuck in a bramble of unpruned branches doesn’t sound like it would be an analogy that would relate to business as a whole, but it really does.  Why is that important for business?  There is so much valuable in narrowing down variables of what a plant – or a business – needs. Especially when things get complicated. But one of the things we must confront in both is the necessity of pruning.  This meme about being an inch away from striking gold is the opposite of pruning. The gold might not be there at all, or it might be very far away, and if you follow every path that you think might lead to gold without pruning, you will exhaust yourself.  There is an art to pruning – knowing when and where to make a decision to cut. We need to notice where there is overgrowth or pay attention not what is too much, and notice where pruning would be beneficial. Where are you getting exhausted mining for gold and when do you pull back? This meme only prioritizes getting to the gold, and

What can pro-dog Ohio teach us about expectations and how efforts to make things better can actually make things worse? Let’s find out! Why is that important for business?  What is done to try to make things better can sometimes end up being viewed as a net negative because the positive wasn’t “positive enough”. In our life and in our business, we have to expect that there are times when not everyone will be happy with our decisions and that doesn’t necessarily mean it was the wrong thing to do. Once someone sees the beginning of something good, it’s almost human nature to only be able to see what could be better.  It’s also important to do what you can to make sure that you get the outcome you actually want, that aligns with the culture of your organization. By virtue of perspective, people are going to see things that you don’t, and that’s a good thing. Make sure you are really seeing the need you are trying to meet, but also accept that even if you see something as pure good or undebatable, it probably isn

How you define a win, for yourself and for your client, can determine what decisions you make. It’s important to take the time to remember what is actually important – what satisfies your Bruce Banner side may not satisfy your inner Hulk.  Why is that important for business?  A win will look very different to different people and at different times, and we have to make sure we are defining a win correctly for ourselves before we let “beating someone else” become our goal. As we talked about in episode 164, Meditation and The Art of Businessing in the Moment https://soheresmystory.libsyn.com/website/meditation-and-the-art-of-businessing-in-the-moment, we need to look from the right perspective and focus on your intent.  You also have to be mindful about what you are fearing. Just as 99% of bad childhood behaviour is trying to get need met and going about it in terrible way, so too is bad business behaviour. You need to step back and address the unmet need.  You have to stay focused not just on the goal, but t