I recently got together with some folks I had worked with in the past….we had worked on an incredibly difficult, multi year, high profile project together.  And as we were reminiscing, laughing, and telling stories about who did what to whom, one thing struck me.

We hadn’t necessarily seen each other or spoken in some time. But the moment we were all around the table again, it was as if time had stopped.

Hard projects are like that…you create bonds with other people unlike any other. You’ve seen each other during wins, during the failures, the mistakes. You’ve seen each other at his or her best and worst.

What it all comes down to is that we all stuck by each other to get through it and accomplish the impossible.  What we’re left with is the knowledge of what we did.  Nothing compares to that feeling: not money, title, or accolades.

So raise your hand for the tough assignments. Stay committed through the end. Care about everyone making it over the finish line. Never forget the importance of integrity. I promise you, you’ll never regret it.

You run the risk of really annoying people around you, but it seems to work.
The tactic? Ask “why?” until you get to the root cause. Five times. Continue reading →

There’s a lot being done in behavioral economics…it attempts to explain things like why you won’t use a $2 app but you’ll spend $30 to go 6 blocks.

This is a great article that talks about customer development from a technology point of view, but I think it’s applicable to lots of situations. Some of the mistakes they talk about:

1. Confirmation Bias: when you focus only on feedback that backs up what you already think and you discount everything else.
2. Hindsight Bias: forgetting all the failures when you have a success, and getting arrogant because of it.
3. Supportive Bias: justifying the decision because you already made the decision (invested money, spent time)

The article struck me because I see a lot of this happening just as part of the day to day life. It’s important to try and ask the right questions in order to get to the truth. And then it’s important to share the truth….I love this quote about using stories:

“Stories are shareable and lend clarity.  They contextualize data in a way everyone can understand and rally behind.  Generally, people are ok with pivots if they understand the impetus.”

With presentations, I remember the stories people tell….I don’t remember random facts and figures. Trying to boil down complicated issues to simple answers is blunt force. Some examples:

Rather than:”Why are you leaving the firm?”
Try: “When did you first start thinking about leaving the firm?”

Rather than: “We’ve created this technology/application/new thing. What do you think?”
Try: “What do you see this xxx doing better than what you do now? What would you hate or dread if someone told you that this xxx was coming?”

It’s so easy to fall in love with something you’ve created/believe in. But too often, we see situations that I call ” a solution in search of a problem.”

These are often the “high skill, low will” people you work with. They know everything, but don’t want to share it. It’s a source of power for them as a way to control others and how they are valued in the organization.

Often this is driven out of insecurity: they choose this strategy rather than being confident enough to share their information as part of a team. They prefer being an individual contributer. They think if they share their information, their value to the organization goes down, and they become disposable. Continue reading →

I get to work with some incredibly smart people….most recently, folks who are the best I’ve seen in the communications space.

I used to think communicating was obvious…but it’s very hard to do well. Think about the time you were asked a difficult question, and you felt tongue-tied in your response.

Often people struggle with communicating when they are unsure what is going to happen. Because the questions tend to be about the future (which often changes), our instinct is to say nothing, plead ignorance, or be vague.

I learned a useful way of thinking about this: weather forecasting.

You can probably predict today’s weather and be accurate. But your prediction accuracy is going to diminish as you go more into the future. People understand that. So the strategy is to communicate with certainty what you know now, identify what is probable, and what’s probably not going to happen.

The objective is not to answer every possible question definitely, but to limit speculation.

My own habit:  Before I go into meetings, I think about the hard questions that might come up, and I write down what I want my answer to be and I review it. I don’t want to be scripted, but I want to be authentic and articulate.  I am not as good when I “wing it” compared to thinking about something ahead of time.