Doug Kreitzberg

Alarm Clocks

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I did a bit of traveling last week, different hotels in different cities. Invariably, I would get up early to get some work in before my meetings. And as I worked, I would begin hearing the incessant beeping of alarm clocks going off in unoccupied rooms. There would be the 5am alarm clocks, the 5:30am alarm clocks, the 6am alarm clocks. It nearly drove me crazy until I figured that I could tune them out by plugging my ear phones in to my ipad and listen to the Vijay Iyer Trio (great stuff for any jazz fans out there).

But it also got me to thinking about the alarm clocks which might be beeping in my background. And there’s always a few. There are the ones that are louder and more discernible, like those that tells me I’m late for a meeting, or that I need to get a project done. And there are ones that I probably should ignore, like some issues which are due far out in the future, or ones that talk to me about things I have no control over, or about people or actions that get my blood boiling over trivial issues. But there are other ones in the background that I really should listen to; the ones that ask whether I’m focusing on what’s really important, that tell me I’m spending too much time on the road and not enough with my family, or the ones that tell me I better watch what I’m eating or that I’m not getting enough sleep.

The key is to tune into those alarms which are important and tune out everything else. In my mind, there are six “alarms” to pay attention to. (And, full disclosure, I’m not good at paying attention to them all the time myself)

Alarm 1: Relationships — Are you spending enough time developing and nurturing your relationships with your family, your beloved, your friends, your co-workers? This is perhaps the most important one to pay attention to. Self-imposed lonliness is a hell that is very difficult to crawl out of.

Alarm 2: Your Passions — Are you spending time on activities which you thoroughly enjoy? Did you take the time to read that book you want to, or go see that band you wanted to see or work on that project that you loved to do?

Alarm 3: Your Health — Take it from someone who knows — When you’re young, you think you can do anything to your body and it will bounce back. Then one day, it knocks at your door and asks for payment due. Pay attention to what you’re body is telling you, and treat it as you would like to be treated (after all, it is you!).

Alarm 4: Your Sprituality — I’m not talking (and wouldn’t talk) religion here. I’m talking connection. To each other, to the world, to the universe, to yourself, to a higher power, to all of the above. Call it what you will, but if you’re not focusing on your version of “it”, you feel like you’re going through the motions.

Alarm 5: Your Finances — Is your spending out pacing your income? Have you set enough side for that upcoming wedding or junior’s college? When you’re stretched financially, it becomes difficult to focus on anything else and you feel like you can’t get out of it. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Alarm 6: The One Thing — During a strategy session last week, we talked about the line from Curley in the movie “City Slickers”, when he tells the main character Mitch, the secret of life. Curley: Do you know what the secret of life is? This. [He holds up one finger.] Mitch: Your finger? Curley: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean sxxt. Mitch: But what is the one thing? Curley: That’s what you have to find out. We spend a lot of time responding to alarm clocks, often someone else’s alarm clocks that at the end of the day do more to distract us than any thing else. As Verne Harnish writes in Rockerfeller Habits, a business consultant once got a job by telling the CEO of a Fortune 500 company that he could help him generate millions in revenue by simply writing down the top five business strategies that would move his company forward and looking at the number one item on his list every fifteen minutes until it was implemented. We think we are great multi-taskers. Perhaps we are just multi-muckers, simply moving the crap from one part of the stall to the next, without getting any of it out of the barn. If you focus on your One Thing you’ll do more than most, and enjoy life more than most, as well.

Take a sheet of paper out, write down the six alarms: Relationships, Passions, Health, Spirituality, Finances, The One Thing. Next to each alarm, write down what your long term goals is and then write down what you want to achieve today in each of those categories. If you really truly focus on these alarms, you are paying attention to what’s really important.

Then pop in your ear buds and tune out the rest.

A morning not fishing

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This weekend, I took my daughter to our family place in Montana. She had not been there in three years and I had promised to take her over the summer, but the work got too crazy. So we settled for a long weekend and a little hooky from school.

We had a wonderful weekend. One of my favorite memories is when we took a little boat to go fishing out on the lake.  We were at the mouth of a creek and the water began boiling with jumping Kokanee salmon.  My daughter was excited and grabbed the one fishing rod we had and started casting and reeling.  “Now I have a real fish story to tell,” she exclaimed.  And it was a sight to behold and under any other condition, I would have been reaching for the rod myself, or at the very least fussing that I had not brought another one out, as well.

But, I actually enjoyed the not fishing. I actually enjoyed, teaching my daughter how to make a good cast, how to jig, how to make sure she cleaned off the seaweed “salad” she’d invariably hook in to.  We did not catch any fish that morning, but I did catch the satisfaction and gratitude of sharing an experience with my daughter.

Business is often all about doing, and doing invariably means personal achievement.  And it is true, we are measured and rewarded by our accomplishments.  What I hope we don’t forget is that sometimes our accomplishments are best defined when we don’t do anything but let someone else give it a try.  Not only do we grow as an organization because then someone else knows how to get something done, but you grow as a person.

And that’s a reward all to itself.

Tune Out to Tune In

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Do you ever get that feeling that, when you’re struggling for an answer, you never can find it, but when you’re focused on something else, you suddenly see the answer right in front of you? And in fact, from then on, everything you look at, everything you read, everyone you speak to, is giving you more bits and pieces to the answer?

I do. Not often enough, because I don’t always take my own advice. I fight through questions too much at times, going over and over situations, running scenario after scenario until my brain hurts.

Two articles I’ve read recently, from two very different perspectives, tell a similar story. One, an article from the New York Times “Your Brain on Computers — Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime” talks about the fact that the exercise machines with the tvs and ipod ports and video displays may help keep you sweating but don’t give your brain the same release as excersing outside.

Putting your brain on hold or downtime, helps place things in perspective, because it is during down times that the brain literally puts things in their place. “‘Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into long-term memories,’ said Loren Frank, assitant professor in the department of physiology at the university [of California, San Francisco]….He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, ‘you prevenet this learning process.'”

The other article (courtesy of Mitch Joel’s Blog) is from Wired magazine, about a transportation engineer in Holland who has focused on removing roadsigns to increase awareness (and thereby improve safety). The author travels with the engineer, Hans Monderman, to a city intersection he designed. “..there it is: the Intersection. It’s the confluence of two busy two-lane roads that handle 20,000 cars a day, plus thousands of bicyclists and pedestrians. Several years ago, Monderman ripped out all the traditional instruments used by traffic engineers to influence driver behavior – traffic lights, road markings, and some pedestrian crossings – and in their place created a roundabout, or traffic circle….To an approaching driver, the intersection is utterly ambiguous — and that’s the point….The drivers slow to gauge the intentions of crossing bicyclists and walkers. Negotiations over right of way are made through fleeting eye contact. Remarkably, traffic moves smoothly around the circle with hardly a brake screeching, horn honking, or obscene gesture. ‘I love it!’ Monderman says at last. ‘Pedestrians and cyclists used to avoid this place, but now, as you see, the cars look out for the cyclists, the cyclists look out for the pedestrains, and everyone looks out for each other.'”

We live in an age where we are assaulted by data, signs, stimulation. Perhaps now, more than ever, we need to step back, perhaps even away, rip off the ear buds, tear our eyes from the tv or the computer and live at analog speed for a while. Then, when we least expect it, we’ll see what we’ve been looking for all that time. Or at least be aware of all that we can see and (like driving through an intersection without directions) live a life more self-directed.

Death by Dashboard

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Two years ago, I had all the operations in my business put together dashboards — metrics on many aspects of our business (from sales calls to retention) — that could help us understand what was working and not working before we saw the results in our P&Ls. Since then, the dashboards have been extremely helpful in focusing our attention and adding more energy and resources where needed.

But dashboards, as helpful as they might be, are no substitute for thinking broadly. Dashboards (or metrics, or formulas or whatever set of tools you have which measures your business) are constructed based on your business model, your knowledge of the model and your ability to gather data with respects to that model as it exists today. Dashboards do not discriminate between good or bad models; they simply describe it.

And what they describe are the hundreds of critical tasks that managers and employees need to pay attention to every day. These are the “Critical but not Important” tasks Stephen Covey writes about. You can’t ignore them. They need to be done. However, these tasks may not be the ones needed to deal with something unforeseen or to exploit the next new opportunity.

Most financial dashboards did not describe the financial collapse of 2008 because they were not built to describe it — it was not in their models. Likewise, many health insurance brokers are scrambling to define themselves in the new world of Health Care Reform; a world in which the old dashboards did not anticipate.

Clay Shirky writes in his blogpost “The Collapse of Complex Business Models”, that businesses begin to fail when they become too complex to deal with changing realities. I actually think it’s simpler than that. Businesses (or individuals) begin to fail when they misread the processes and metrics used to describe the success of their model for the world itself. They fail when they focus too much inward. If complexity is an issue, it’s an issue if it impedes the ability to communicate with (and receive communication from) the world outside the model. It doesn’t matter if you’re AT&T or the florist on the corner. If you’re not paying attention to how people are buying and how their buying activities are beginning to change, your business will suffer.

Don’t get me wrong. Dashboards are important; they are good at telling you whether a process is on track or not. But they can’t be confused — and they often are — as an accurate forecast tool to predict how your business overall will fare in the future. A dashboard is no substitute for strategy. Dashboards are linear, specific, measurable. The world is nonlinear, chaotic, and challenging to determine ahead of time which cause will lead to which effect.

The key is to do what is critical, but raise your eyes to look over the dashboard and really look around you. Leave time to play around with what the world tells you is important. And “play” is the operative word, because if you want to predict something which cannot be predicted, you’ll have to make up a lot of stuff (and test them out in your make-believe world) as you go along.

Don’t Be Tofu!

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My wife is experimenting with vegetarian cooking. And tofu plays a major role in a lot of dishes. “The thing about tofu,” my wife said, “is that it tastes just like whatever you cook it with. If you cook it with celery, it will taste like celery, with rice, it will taste like rice, with mushrooms, with anything.”

And then, she said, “Don’t be like tofu. don’t just blend in.”

And she’s right. There’s a seemingly gravitational pull towards conformity that any society creates, whether the society is a business, a family or a cocktail party. While there are benefits to conformity, the costs are that we sometimes cover up our own uniqueness with the cloak of what we feel others want to see. Do that often enough and then you lose that unique essence that defines you.

And yet, in any group, uniqueness is critical if we are to grow and adapt to what confronts us. A community’s success, if not survival, is predicated on harnessing the unique talents and perspectives of it’s members and channeling them in a positive direction.

Think about who you are, and what unique skills, traits or ways of seeing the world you possess. Make sure you express those in your team, at the office, at home. You will always then be able to feel “you”, and we will all be stronger (and more interesting) because of it.

Baptism in Lake Superior

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On Saturday I completed my first marathon, Grandma’s Run in Duluth, MN.  My standing joke had been that, given my size, I’d be in the Clydesdale’s weight divison and given my inexperience, I’d be in the back of the Clydesdales making me the horse’s ass of the race.  I certainly did not break any land speed records, but I finished approximately at the time I had been pacing during my training (5:25).  I was in the back of the pack, but when you factor in that about a third of those who started the race did not finish, I’ll take it.
 
Eight months ago, all this seemed improbable.  I had this desire to get back into running, bought a pair of shoes, went out for a two mile jog and walked 1.5 miles of it.  A week or two later, around Thanksgiving, I told my friend I was going to run a 56 miler — the Comrades in South Africa in June (mainly because walking the uphills is encouraged) and he told me I was insane.  And when anyone tells me I’m insane, I start to think there’s some merit to it.  And, even though I won’t make Comrades — this year — I have a tremendous sense of accomplishment and have learned a number of things along the way.  And I believe they apply for anything, whether you are running a business, making sales, trying to retain clients or wishing to pursue your core passion.
 
1,    Think Big.  I am definitely not typecast for running 26.2 miles.  But I was tired of working out.  I needed something bigger than “to lose weight”  or “to relieve stress”.  I needed something almost impossible to shoot for.  What’s the point, if you can’t aspire for something bigger than you are?
 
2.   Get a Plan.  Of course, even if you are shooting for the impossible, it helps to have a plan. And I found this wonderful resource on the interent, Hal Higdon’s Marathon Training program for novices.  It gave me an 18 week plan which told me how many miles to run and which days to run them, as well as a lot of good tips (like, “run slow, the goal of a first-timer is to finish”).  Although there were a few exceptions, I followed this program to the letter. 
 
3.  Talk to People who’ve Been There.  Along the way I was fortunate to get encouragement and tips from those who had run marathons. One friend gave me tips on how to plan the run (such as “don’t run too fast in the beginning or you’ll die before the end”) and  another (who apparently has run quite a lot of marathons) got me to go to a real running store to get shoes to match my gait after I complained of hip and knee pain (both went away with the new shoes). I drew a lot of inspiration from them, which helped me immensely.
 
4.  The Training is the Thing.  It’s amazing to me how little emphasis we place on training, whether at the office, on the field or at home.  We all seem to want to focus on Just Doing It.  But, what is more important is to “Just Practice It”.  Practicing builds confidence, builds mental toughness and perhaps most importantly, builds agility.  During the marathon, between miles 15 and 17, I began running out of steam and I switched to a “run 2 min, walk 1 min” mode which I tried during parts of my last long practice run.  By 17, I got a second wind and moved back into more of a running mode. If I hadn’t trained for contingencies, I might not have finished. Remember, training isn’t just about learning how to do the right thing; it’s also about learning how to adapt when you can’t do the right the thing (which happens more than we care to believe).
 
5.  Learn to love the Long Run.  Every Saturday was my long run day.  It was probably the most important part of the training program, but it also became my favorite.  I enjoyed having “Pasta Night” with the family the night before, getting up to hit the road between 5am or 5:30am, startling the occassional deer, fox or raccoon on the road, waking the sheep up at a passing farm, or witnessing a beautiful spring sunrise.  The long runs became the one time during the week which was all “my time”, to reconnect, to bring clarity to whatever was weighing on me or to just simply breathe.  It is almost as if the Goal of the Marathon became the Training, not the other way around.
 
6. Scout Out the Route before you Run. The day before the race, I took a bus ride along the course.  Despite a boorish tour guide who took one look at me and starting joking about eating chocolate bars and smoking Pall Malls along the way (how did he know my strategy?), I did get a chance to see the course, the hills, the turns and the neighborhoods.  It helped me during the race, when I could visualize what was coming up, which spurred me along.
 
7.  A Marathon is a Team Sport.  Running a long way for a long time is helped greatly by those running with you and with those along the way routing for you or giving you water.  I spent half of the race with a pace group.  The leader did a great job joking and telling stories and help us maintain our pace during the run.  During the last six miles, we ran through town and I marveled at the people still lining the street (remember, when I was running through the race was 4 to 5 hours old at the time) cheering us on.  (Note:  Although I’ve learned that there are three things specators should not say:  “You look great!”  (Everyone running looks like crap); “You’re almost there”  (After a while, any distance seems like a lifetime.); and “This is the last hill” (Which means “this is the last hill before the next hill”.)) There is something about the loneliness of the long distance runner, but it helps to encourage others and be encouraged along the way.
 
8.  In the end, however, it’s up to You.  After the tips, the encouragement and the training, after the Canadien and American National Anthems and the Minnesota National Guard Jet Flyover and the Chariots of Fire music at the gate, there’s basically nothing left but you and your feet.  You, ultimately, are responsible for finishing or not finishing and you can’t make any excuses or blame anyone else.  That’s a somewhat intimidating feeling, but on the other hand, when you do finish, it is ultimately because of what you alone were able to accomplish.
 
After the race, I was talking to a local from Duluth and he asked whether I had jumped into Lake Superior yet.  I told him I had not and he told me that it was important that I at least walk in up to my knees, that the Lake was an important part of the area and I could not leave Duluth without doing it.  The next day, I took a walk alongside the Lake.  It was a beautiful day and there was a nice breeze coming off the water.  At one point, there was a beach like area.  I made my way to the water’s edge, took off my shoes and walked in.  The water was cool, but felt wonderful.  I felt wonderful.  Rejuvenated. And ready to do it all again.
 
That’s what success feels like.

 

Who not What

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Let’s face it. It’s always all about us. The world we see is a world where we see ourselves, often only ourselves, what we want and what we do. And our self-centeredness is fine and probably necessary as some darwinian self-selected survival instinct.

But there are limitations. When we focus only on ourselves, we sometimes make the mistake that others are also focused on ourselves. We forget that they have needs and wants and may be focused on themselves. This creates problems for relationships, certainly, and also in business.

As a business grows and becomes successful, it creates an organization that initially is built to enhance and ensure future success. After a time, however, many organizations lose themselves in self-adoration; internal discussions focus on what the company does and the products it makes as opposed to the people or businesses it serves. It’s a well-worn tale. Business starts out extremely customer-focused, becomes successful because of that focus and grow processes and bureaucracies which detach strategies from the customer. Business then crumbles to more nimble-footed competition that is as focused on the customer as the original business once was.

I’ve been engaged in too many conversations recently which has been focused more on what is sold than who actually buys it. Sure, there’s talk about market segments, such as lawyers versus doctors or baby boomers versus millennials, but there’s no dimensionality to that part of the discussion; the talk about products is real and tangible — the talk about customers is vague and almost an afterthought.

Technology has provided us with tremendous and low-cost tools to engage customers and prospects as unique individuals (or businesses) with unique interests, needs and desires. But all those tools will be useless if the organization retains a culture that is more inward focused than outward, that talks about the features of its products rather than the benefits to the customer.

If you listen to, and think more about the who, the what will take care of itself.

The Last Cry of the Airport Loudspeaker

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I’ve been on a couple of conference calls this week both from airports and with individuals who are in airports.  Given this age of constant travel, I suppose that’s not too unusual.  What also is not unusual is the intrusive drone of the airport loudspeaker into those conference calls.

Outside of the times when a plane is boarding, is there really a reason for the airport loudspeaker? Does Darrell Wakeman really need a verbal reminder that his plane is boarding?  Do we need to be constantly reminded to watch our bags?  Or that the airport is smoke-free?  I somehow get through life going many places without having a loudspeaker tell me things like that.  Will I forget it all when I’m in a terminal?  Turn the thing off!

Conversely, isn’t communication technology well enough advanced to parse out the unmistakable sound of a loudspeaker?  Can I get an app for that?

Finally, think about all the times you are the airport loudspeaker.  How many times do you spout directives or adages that at best expose the obvious and at worst are tiresomely obnoxious?

When we speak, let’s be clear, concise and in an even mannered tone.  And let’s certainly have something worthwhile to say.

Pancake People

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There’s a lot of buzz around social media these days and, of course, the Internet has become the de-facto platform for communication and commerce.   We have the ability to connect and interact in ways never thought possible. Customers have become Fans and the Fans can determine quickly whether your product or service wins or losses.  Facebook and Twitter and texting have replaced e-mail and voice-mail (and does anyone ever remember the written letter, or the “while you were out” notes anymore?).  As a result, our stories, our ideas, our dreams and our passions can only exist if they fit into 140 characters.

There are some individuals who are challenging the direction we are heading.  Futurist Jaron Lanier writes that the concept of  reputation has been reduced to the quantity of connections and how one’s persona on the web is often a fiction compared to one’s persona in real life.  Journalist Nicholas Carr describes that, through the internet, we have become playwright Richard Foreman’s “pancake people”, “wide and thin as a pancake because thanks to the next link we are constantly jumping from one piece of information to another. We get wherever we want, but at the same time we lose depth because we no longer time to reflect, contemplate.”

These are not the voices of stone-age luddites decrying technological advances.  There is value to engage your customers or friends using the tools of Web 2.0.   But there is also danger in expecting that the quality of that engagement will be enough to sustain meaningful relationships over time.

To be fair, the internet is not the sole villain in this play. For years, businesses have tried many ways to reduce the depth of their interactions with their customers and prospects via direct mail, call centers and all forms of mass-media.  Indeed web 2.0 tools can increase the possibility of a two-way conversation.  The challenge is being able to both listen and have something of value to say during that dialogue.

The key is to provide the opportunity to engage and inform with a depth and to a degree that one can’t get elsewhere.  Individuals and businesses that can combine Web 2.0 with Contemplation 1.0 will be the ones with the strongest and most authentic relationships.

Poncho and Lefty

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For the past six months I’ve had a cd by Townes Van Zandt recycling through my car stereo.  I have a few other cds as well, most of which I enjoy but also most of which my wife is tired of hearing over and over.

But I keep come back to Townes who has a simple, earthy directness to his music.

One of the songs is called “Poncho and Lefty”. The song tells the tale of a bandit named Poncho and his blues singing sidekick, Lefty.  Poncho is gunned down by the authorities in a Mexico desert and Lefty leaves for Ohio with a trail of suspicon that he might have tipped the Federales off for money.

When I first started listening to it, I thought it was a nice ballad. Later I thought that the story would make for a good “buddy” movie ala Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”.

But over the past month, I’ve been thinking that the song is not about two separate people, but two sides of the same person: the adventurous/creative side versus the pragmatic survivor.  The song talks about how many of us are the Judas to our own dreams and passions in return for what we believe to be a life of  security and conformity.

I think about the misalignment of our dreams and actions often, because I do believe that it leads more to chronic stress than anything else. I also believe that it makes it that much more difficult for an organization to align its purpose with the individual. The more an organization can involve employees in ways which inspire their individual passions, then everyone wins.

Of course, work needs to get done.  And not every task may seem to inspire passion in you, but if the bulk of what you are doing seems pointless and lifeless, then why are you doing it? That may not mean that you quit and pursue your dreams elsewhere (although it might) but it might mean thinking real hard about what it is you love to do and see if you can’t craft your job to do more of that – you’d be surprised at easy it might be to pull off; your boss is thirsting for employees who demonstrate initiative.

Townes’ song ends with Lefty growing old in a cheap hotel. But that is not how it needs to end for any of us.  We have the ability to redeem ourselves from ourselves every day, if we choose to.

That’s worth singing about.