Three Rings or the County Fair

• The circus is all about activity and show.

• The county fair is about mastery and creating...roll up the sleeves, do it better, excel – pies, pumpkins, sheep, and prize-winning cattle.

Which has the lasting impact on everyone involved?

How to become wise in 5 minute increments –Rainmakers.

Peer Review Or World View?

I read another message touting peer review as a benefit. Umm, maybe.

My experience with peer review is that it is often a closed, self-congratulatory model from a closed, self-congratulatory society about work that is destined to go into the stacks.

We need better.

At one point I led sixty top writers in a production environment. We had immediate deadlines and developed a creative review process to improve our quality.

I learned that junior reviewers would upend a mess of personal issues and concerns to create an edit package that couldn’t be implemented. The better reviewers would identify the one change that everyone agreed made all the difference.

Sometimes it’s the notes you don’t play.

Excellent review is a craft that doesn’t come with elevation. 

Review is quite different from creation.

In evaluating management performance, it’s harder to improve someone who is doing things right. Although we have observed managers feel a need.

Anyone who has ever authored a proposal to the government and then taken it through review has seen how review teams don’t even know the proposal’s objectives, yet have strident and emotional demands.

Will they improve the proposal? Why do you ask?

My teachers in the Pentagon call it, “Changing small dog to puppy.” And they are masters at accepting review, because in review, too often they’re not about making something better, they’re about getting through with minimum damage, in a process that hasn’t been defined for generations.

Once upon a time paper was expensive, print runs were short, and people read scholarly publications. Now, not so much.

Technology has disintermediated publishing businesses, and getting the message to more of the people who can use it may be more important than getting published.

I read a lot of good technical writing. I also read a fair amount of bad technical writing, although not by choice.

Much as I enjoy TED, LifeHacker, or Open Culture, as places that get new knowledge out to the masses, my go-to source for learning is Wikipedia. Even when I disagree, they have a massive amount of links to get to usable information.

Peer review? Better to get World View.

Tips 4 The Big Chair – Perspective 2.0

It's All About the People

With the evolving efficiency of technology...

With the reliance on email...

With buying from submitted offers and proposals...

With the voicemail 'barrier' to talking directly...

It is easy to lose sight of:

It's the people, not the paper. A face-to-face visit beats a pile of paper to get the right result.

Sales Lab Video Channel - Entertaining experience

Optimism and Empathy

It’s been my month for hearing about the benefits of empathy. And I agree empathy can sometimes be a key factor in extraordinary performance.

However empathy takes developing a deeper relationship than I often can or choose. Empathy works best with a settled team, which I get less and less. Too often results are required before I know people.

Which led me to think about optimism.

Optimism comes from inside. I don’t need to build it in a team, I bring it. Winners recognize and reinforce it.

Optimism creates mirroring behavior. Optimism creates intense focus. Optimism creates energy, whether people know you or not.

Optimism creates culture. Culture has to be present to have empathy.

Thinking back on the people who have influenced me the most, many didn’t show empathy, heck many didn’t even know me, but the common element was an attitude of experienced, believable optimism.

As you get ready to go in, turn on the grin. People will wonder what you know that they don’t.

The Sales Lab Model – So THAT’S the answer!

New Learning

The Internet has changed the nature of learning. Pre-Internet, the chore was finding facts and then assembling them, an additive process.

Now,we have more facts than we can use, and the game is to subtract the dross to get to what works.

In a similar vein – This month we’ve seen several guys who had been working longer hours for less effect and finally, when they get let go or their organization implodes, they don’t know anyone who can help them. Toby Keith’s I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then... Heartfelt but ineffectual.

A year ago I had a mole my wife didn’t like, so I asked my doc. He said go see a dermo. Took 6 months to see the dermo he recommended. Nobody in her organization wanted to make it easy.

When we finally met, she was too busy with her nitrogen bottle to look at my mole.

Eventually, I went back to my doc and chastised him. He said I should probably go see his personal dermo, not the one the government “recommended” he should recommend.

Two days later, the new dermo says, yup, it’s coming off, pucker up.

Four days after that, yup it was hot, can you get back in here today so we can finish it?

I’m into life, liberty and the pursuit, so heck yes.

Now besides the fact that the 2^nd dermo is actually practicing medicine which includes sudden service, I noticed that the staff was on time, smiling, and spoke up, saying good morning, and how are you with real interest. I like to play that game. It’s an indicator of competence.

I have a friend, an engineer, who retained a lawyer to get him a patent. Mid way through, the lawyer decided to rethink his compensation, and stopped work. It’s now been five years and he keeps sending statements adding interest to the work he never did, which is now useless.

I accept neither a lawyer or an engineer has adequate social skills. I was thinking too bad their wives didn’t know each other. Then this never would have happened.

The new learning is how to pick a winner. Certification means very little.

My key questions are who have I worked with successfully before, and then who do I know who has worked with someone successfully before? If I can’t answer those questions, I figure I don’t have the expertise to make a good choice.

Knowing that, I try to follow Will Rogers advice, “The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it in your back pocket.”

Sales Lab Resources – How-to’s you can use.