Kill the Panel by Giving it Some Life

I’ve been to a lot of conferences lately and there is one conference convention I wish would die: the panel discussion.

To be more specific, it’s the panel part I wish would go away.

A panel is almost the opposite of a discussion.

Participants are packed behind a long table. They can’t see each other very well. What we can see of them is hunched over a cafeteria table, their necks craning towards a microphone.

These “discussions” always remind me of congressional hearings, which have never struck me as terribly moving experiences.

Actual discussions can be very moving. 

So why not have your panelists stand next time? Give them some ability to move around. Or arrange them in comfortable chairs curved towards the audience so that we feel more like we’re hearing wisdom from our elders, not testimony from the defendants.

Good advice from a 5th grade classroom wall

The Apple Watch is a Creativity Enhancer. I Hope...

An experiment in managing distraction...

Yes, I’m one of those people. I preordered the Apple Watch early in the morning on its first release, several weeks ago, before almost anyone had seen or touched it in person. I ordered a relatively expensive piece of electronics that saves me the exertion of pulling my phone out of my pocket.

In all truth, during most of the lead up to its launch, I had no intention of buying an Apple Watch. But as talk increased, my curiosity grew—and maybe not for the reasons you’re guessing.

As an improviser, business leader, parent, and human being—I think about attention a lot. Just as our calendars and bank accounts often say more about our values than any other statements we make, how we direct our attention is a key indicator of our truest values and approach to life. Time and energy are more critical currencies than any dollars you can pull out of your pocket.

The Apple Watch, like all other smart watches and phones, will serve as a great test to its wearers’ values—but also, perhaps, as an asset. 

The notifications, trivial emails, cat videos, and candy crushing games we carry around in our pockets on our phones already steal countless minutes and hours that could be spent on more meaningful endeavors. I’ve been as guilty as anyone of burning an hour reading Buzzfeed lists when I really should be doing something more creative, productive, and significant.

So, why—you may be asking—am I entertaining the possibility of strapping those distractions to my wrist?!

A fair question.

The Apple Watch may prove to be only an exacerbation of the plague of attention-drain that we are all battling in this modern world. But I’m also hopeful that the Apple Watch and other similar devices may have potential as deliberate lenses and filters with which we can focus our attention.

Any screen that’s connected to the internet these days deserves careful scrutiny towards its settings and what information you allow to pop into your frame of view. With its prominent wrist real estate, a notification-capable watch deserves the most scrutiny of all. I don’t plan to allow any email notifications, nor will social media dings be allowed space on the postage stamp sized screen.

Even more powerful, the capacity of smart watches as not simply information presenters, but also as idea collectors, has real potential to magnify our creative output.

Never mind my smartphone, my brain pings me with annoying distractions as often as any device I own does: “I really should mulch the yard this Spring….we’re out of toilet paper…I can’t forget to call Julie at work about the proposal due on Monday….next week is picture day at school for the kids….what did I just come down to the basement to get?”  

All of these unorganized and random mental alarms interrupt our focus and interfere with our ability to be present and at the top of our game.  As David Allen says, “Your brain is for having ideas, not holding them.” 

“The capacity of smart watches as not simply information presenters, but also as idea collectors, has real potential to magnify our creative output.”

I have long used an app called OmniFocus to manage all my projects and todos. There are lots of apps that do this sort of thing, but OmniFocus is my favorite for reasons I’ll write about at some other time. The key feature I love is that it syncs a master database of projects, todos, responsibilities, and deadlines across my MacBook, iPhone, iPad, and now my Apple Watch. It integrates with Siri, which means that whenever one of these thoughts comes to mind I can quickly capture it and get back to the project I’m working on.

Next time my brain reminds me that I need to pick something up at the store, find some information about conference I just heard about, or draft an email to the board, I’ll just raise my wrist and dictate the note into my watch. It’s immediately captured to my OmniFocus lists and I’m back to what I was doing.

“ Your brain is for having ideas, not holding them.”

— David Allen

Capturing new ideas and quickly dealing with distractions is one of the most critical keys to doing our most meaningful work whether that’s launching a new project, being prepared to make this afternoon’s meeting as productive as possible, or having a calm and present dinner with your kids. Having a clear mind that’s not encumbered with the heavy lifting of keeping track of everything allows your mind to focus on what it loves most: exploring new ideas and possibilities, solving problems, and being present with the people around you.

So, I’ll be experimenting with this new watch and seeing how well it works as an asset and a liability when it comes to living a more creative and productive life. I'll keep you posted on what I discover.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear how you deal with all the daily distractions that pop-up—both mental and digital. What are the tools (electronic or analog) you’ve discovered help support your most creative and meaningful work?

photo credit: Apple Watch Sport via photopin (license)

-----

Subscribe by email

© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

This Missing Element in Your Analysis: Fear

Recently, one of our project groups was debating whether or not we continue offering a program that a few of our clients had become quite attached to. Despite its fans, the program had never quite caught on and was becoming more and more of a distraction. For more than an hour, we debated whether or not the program was viable or not listing pros and cons and making forecasts both dire and optimistic from different camps around the table.

Finally someone asked, “What are we so afraid of?” Within a few minutes, it became clear that the staff who worked most closely with our users were afraid that they would be perceived as untrustworthy when we suddenly pulled the offering from our menu. Support staff were afraid if we continued the project as-is that they they were going to start making significant mistakes on core operating procedures because of the number of distracting curveballs coming out of this relatively small endeavor. Senior leadership was afraid that the organization was losing a sense of sticktoitiveness that had so long defined its culture.  

Instantly, the nature of the debates changed in a profound and productive way. Arm-wrestling over assessments changed to proactively addressing fears and obstacles.

The majority of business conversations skip over a key element that every business has to deal with: fear.

There’s a lot of debate out there about whether it’s better to focus on assets or deficits. Do we focus on what we’re good at or shore up our weak areas? 

Fans of the Clifton StrengthsFinders assessment will starkly encourage you to give little attention to your weaknesses and focus only on the competencies in which you are strongest such as Adaptability, Command, Empathy, and Winning Over Others.

Jim Collins promotes a slightly more pessimistic point of view he calls “productive paranoia” in which teams actively seek out vulnerabilities and address them before they turn fatal.

More egalitarian folks tend to look at both sides of the coin. Almost every conference room has hosted its fair share of SWOT analysis sessions in which teams list out their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

But I think there’s another category that we should discuss more in the conference room: Fear.

Organizations are made of human beings—not robots—and because of that, organizations are much more like organisms than mechanisms. Sure they have their strengths and their weaknesses. You can draw up a scoring documents or multi-axis grids to quantify performance metrics, but only leveraging strengths and training up in less competent areas misses a big part of the story. Because they are made up of people, organizations necessarily have fears.

Employees have fears. Leaders have fears. Communities have fears. Customers have fears. Donors have fears. All humans have fears.

What often holds us back from our very best work is not lack of knowledge or skills—it’s overcoming fears.

Sure competencies or incompetencies should be noted and addressed, but if you are only looking at report cards when building an organization—or even more importantly, a movement—then you are missing something big.

People have all sorts of fears:  fear of failing, of looking stupid, of losing esteem, of straining relationships, of being perceived as too demanding or not demanding enough, or just not getting it. The list goes on forever. 

An organization’s users have fears too: the fear being betrayed or made a fool; of throwing away their time or money; of being associated with a product or cause or style that won’t meet the approval of their peers.

I’m sure you’ve heard people if your organization ask things like, “What’s the problem? How can we do better? What resources do we have or lack?” But when is the last time you heard somebody ask, “What are we afraid of?”

“What are we afraid of?” should not be a rhetorical challenge to your organization’s courage. It should be asked with earnest and the courage it will take to answer. Honest responses will point you towards different sorts of needs than the average strategy conversation. 

As a stage improviser, people often tell me how terrified they would be to stand on stage in front of hundreds of people without a script and with good reason, it can be terrifying sometimes—not knowing exactly what is going to happen next but needing to find success anyway. The irony is that most people of all walks go through their days with no script but expectations of success.

Perhaps there is something about a stage that makes the fears more apparent. Even if you’ve never stood on a one, you can probably empathize with the anxiety that comes with a big client meeting, or lunch with a donor, or a surprise phone call from a frustrated customer. They are all stages of sorts and identifying the specific fears associated with each of them illuminates opportunities for growth.

I often find it helpful to ask myself what I’m afraid of before I go on stage in the theater, or boardroom, or the workshop classroom. Naming those fears helps identify the resources or strategies needed to address them whether that be as simple as a change in perspective or as intensive as identifying a new and robust training regiment.

So next time, try modifying that SWOT assessment just a bit and do a SWOT-F. Because fears aren't always barriers. Sometimes they're beacons.

photo credit: Brown Recluse ("Fiddleback" or "Violin") Spider on my Wall via photopin (license)

-----

Subscribe by email

© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Where you start matters

There was a not so recent past in which ideas were turned into products and then products would be sold to users by selling them on the notion that they had a problem they didn’t realize they had. The work was convincing the users that the problem was real. 

Product then Pitch then Problem then User.

These days, that’s a tougher trick to pull off. In the era of Google and Amazon user reviews—products that don’t really fix problems don’t last very long. Pitches that don’t resonate with real problems, even petty problems, aren’t going to survive in a world of so much choice.

In this new world (which I’d argue is very much like the old world when we bought solutions from people instead of from infomercials) the process has to be inverted: 

User then Problem then Product then—if necessary— the Pitch.

Those who practice creativity have understood this since the beginning of time. If you want to create something of real value you have to start from something that comes from real meaning and real need. 

Hamlet, the iPhone, Doctors Without Borders—they all started with real human need and let the work unveil itself from there.

Work that matters starts with humans. Great ideas that are going to make a difference begin with keen observations of each other as people and communities.

-----

Subscribe by email

© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Leaders are losers.

As leaders, we often credit the esteem we have with others to our successes, our output, our wins. And while there is truth to that, the reality is that most leaders lose much more than they win—and that’s why they attract followers.  

No one can be excellent at everything.  Gifted leaders are extremely focussed about where they want to win and where they are willing to lose.

Responding to every opportunity, every request, every criticism, every acknowledgment of your shortcomings (perceived and real) is like trying to play four sports in one season while also getting a culinary degree and remodelling your bathroom.

photo credit: Wired man via photopin (license)

-----

Subscribe by email

© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Frogs for breakfast

After waking up with a sore throat, my oldest daughter got a positive strep test back from the clinic the other day. We were sent home with a bottle of liquid penicillin and a 24 hour quarantine.

My daughter has a notoriously limited list of foods she finds acceptable—most of her favorites range in the white to slightly off-white color spectrum. So we weren’t surprised this morning when we found her staring at the tablespoon-serving of medicine with a pained look on her face trying to will the whole situation away.

She’s capable of maintaining this posture for hours at a time.

I broke it down for her: 

“You can gulp the medicine down now and get back to happily reading your books. Or, you can stall, put a half hour of worry and anxiety in your pocket, and then take the medicine.

Which option do you like better?”

She’s a smart kid: she choked down the meds.

Mark Twain is credited with the line, ““Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” 

Actually, Nicolas Chamfort deserves the true credit for the line and in his version it was a toad. Nonetheless, the notion behind it is to start your day with something terrible in the aim of moving towards something great.  

Often the frog rule gets misconstrued as a masochistic ritual of self-torture. While I think there is benefit to taking on some tasks simply to remind ourselves we can do hard things,—I don’t think that’s where the core value of the “frog rule” lies.

All projects, even the ones that we know will make us better, come with distasteful parts. There’s often no getting around those bits—they need to happen. Swallowing one small frog each morning is a way to spread them out, to drink the whole bottle of medicine one tablespoon at a time.

Here’s a suggestion:

Try taking a few index cards or sticky notes and write a “frog” on each one. The frog should help get you closer to some key goal you’ve got. It may be around a professional project you’re working on, some physical or psychological health goal, or a relationship you are trying to improve.  Chances are, you already know several key steps towards getting you to those goals and at least one or two of them don’t taste too good.

Don’t make this a mental list—write them down. Things often lose some of their emotional potency once they’re on paper. 

Put them on individual pieces of paper. You’ve got to make them bite-sized. One frog you can handle. A crate-full of them living on one legal-sized sheet of paper is overwhelming and will get hidden under that stack of memos, articles, and parking tickets you don’t want to think about either.

Pick one frog each morning and “eat it” by the end of the day. Do it in the morning, and you can go through the rest of the day without the anxiety.

Any great endeavor is going to come with some frogs. You can eat them sooner or later, but you’ll have to eat them. Might was well get it done with and enjoy the rest of your day.

-----

Subscribe by email

© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Forget, "What's the goal?" Focus on, "What's the frame?"

There’s a great cafe-style seafood place not far from my house. At the registers, they don’t have one tip jar, they have two. Each jar has opposing categories that change periodically (Boxers or Briefs, Seahawks or Patriots, Country or Jazz, Rice or Beans).

I’ve heard that places that employ this tactic increase their tips by more than 30%! People can’t resist assigning themselves a group.

We love categories. We can’t help it. It’s key to our evolution. Sure, our ancestors got good at building strong and protective social communities, made things like the wheel and fire, and charted important cyclical events like weather patterns and seasons—but what allowed for all of that was a knack for pattern recognition. We see what makes things similar and what makes them different.

The first words in almost all languages we know of, first made a distinction between humans and non-humans. The next words that develop are almost always category words, as well--distinguishing non-humans (animals) into sub-categories that either fly, swim, or crawl—something along the lines of bird, fish, snake.

These categories, or what I like to call frames, are still essential to how we perceive and describe the world around us. They’re tremendously useful. (Imagine the time you are saved when you tell people you need a plumber recommendation, not just a human-with-a-wrench recommendation).

When I am hosting an improv show, I almost always use a frame to help focus the audience and get them creative when trying to get a suggestion for a scene. If I ask them to “Shout out something!”—there is virtual silence. If I ask them to shout out “something red,” a cacophony of ideas bounces back: “Firetruck!” “Apples!” “My car!” “Strawberries!” “Cinnamon candies!” “Mars!” “The Red Baron!”

Frames both limit and open up possibilities.

But when frames become unconscious to us, they can lead to trouble. Unknowingly, we start casting our votes amongst a limited number of virtual tips jars.

When setting plans, instead of looking for goals that are at the essence of what matters to us, we start looking for goals that fit categories like, “Things the board likes to hear,” or “Things that will impress the neighbors.”

Instead of looking for projects that fit into the frame “Problems we can help our customers fix,” we focus on, “Things that will sound great in an email announcement.”

If you’re framing a starting place, like a suggestion for an improv scene, the category is pretty arbitrary. If you’re framing a desired result, being intentional with your frame is critical.

photo credit: Tip Jars via photopin (license)

-----

Subscribe by email

© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Creating something is almost as great as the creation.

I just had to post this mesmerizing video of making paper art.

Inspired me to think about all the work we do and how we can apply the same sense of patience, craft, and intention. The results are worth it.

Post by artFido - fetching art.

Set Problems, Not Goals.

A few years ago, I had a Goal to run a marathon. Then I registered for one. Suddenly, I had a Problem: Somehow, I had to train my body to run 26 miles in a row in the 4 months. 

The want shifted to a necessity.

When a theater audience tells a group of improvisers to do a scene about aliens landing during the French Revolution, they’re not giving the cast a goal. They’re giving them a problem to solve.

A goal isn’t what got me across the marathon finish line, solving the Problem did.

I think “Goal” has become one of those words we use so often, it’s lost its meaning. 

Goals quickly become the equivalent of New Year’s resolutions with the same amount of actual resolve attached to them. Often, they lack aspiration and are just predictions based on our already established trajectory.

Problems demand action and imply urgency. Goals often become wall art.

So this year—instead of Goals—my work team is choosing some Key Problems. Not problems that are happening to us, but Problems we want to create for us.

(Bonus: Choosing Problems as the focus of the change you want shifts your response when the problems you didn’t choose inevitably show up. Instead of them feeling like unexpected enemies to your goal, they are familiar cousins that can be dealt with in the same manner.)

photo credit: Puzzle pieces via photopin (license)

-----

Subscribe by email

© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.