Bill Jensen's Blog, page 12

Two Ultimate Questions

Any meeting. Any presentation. There are always two killer questions that must be answered. Especially in a world filled with so much spin and blah blah blah: Your job is to find a way to ask them, and keep asking them, until you get answers.



1. So what?

Now, of course, you're not going to asking it exactly that way, but if the info is not provided, ask you must.



The So What? question is about you making a personal connection to whatever's being shared. Put bluntly, it's: "Why should I care?" But that's a self-centered, lazy way to think about it. That's like telling the presenter: "It's your job to make me care." No. It's your job to find a reason to care!



As humans, one of the reasons we do things is because we passionately care about whatever needs to get done. In business that could be making customers happy, doing innovative and creative work, doing challenging work, making a difference, etc. Your job is — before taking on new or additional work — to keep searching for YOUR personal connection...Why you will care.



A great way to get at this is to ask: "Help me understand..." (completed by whatever you care about)... "how this helps our customers?" ... "how this helps us compete with innovative ideas?" etc. 



Keep asking that same question until you find a reason to care (or not to care) and then act accordingly. (Yes, that includes — while still being a great professional — DISengaging if you simply cannot find a reason to care about the latest corporate flavor of the month.)



2. Now what?

This question is the What, specifically, should we do? question. So many meetings end with no call to action or another meeting or, or, or...Just lots of wastes of time! Your job is — if the presenter doesn't do it — to quickly get clarity on who needs to do what by when.



Ideally, the details will look like the SMART model: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timebound. But if you can't get that outta the presenter, at the very least seek how success will be defined. Without that, don't budge! Don't do anything! Really. Employ the Smile and Nod strategy (while being disengaged) until you get more specifics.  



IF DONE WELL: So what? Now what? is not a whiner's lazy-ass-avoid-work strategy. It's respecting your own time and energy and attention. You deserve more from the people presenting to you or handing out work assignments.   

Be Insatiably Curious!

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

Join the Disruptive Movement!

  




Erika Andersen

Author, Leading So People Will Follow

Blog







MY DISRUPTIVE CHALLENGE

My Dad. “He was a gentle disruptor. His medium of disruption was curiosity. Watching him do it taught me so much. 



 “We’d be traveling and in a restaurant he’d engage with the waitress — ‘Wow, your husband’s a farmer? What’s that like? Is that tough?’ He was genuinely interested in everyone. 



“And then he’d do it to me too. I was thinking about becoming a musician. ‘What would that be like?’ he’d ask. ‘What would it be like to be a musician? So if you went down that path, how would that work?’ 



“That element of curiosity has served me so well because that’s the core of my disruptive thinking. That inborn curiosity…by the time we become most of us become adults, we’re socialized out of curiosity. Yet, the most interesting people I know are extremely curious. 



“Continuously trying to elevate my own curiosity allows me to ask questions that other people don’t ask. And therefore go down pathways that other people don’t go down.”

FOR MORE: See her video below




Let's Disrupt This!

The future belongs to the extremely curious! 



Of 25 great habits we found when interviewing disruptive heroes, that (Question Everything) was number one! 




If you want to either deal with disruptions or create them, being insatiably curious is the only way to go! First rule of the day: Never ever sit passively, patiently in meetings again. Ask the questions no one else is asking.




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The Two Forces Inside Us

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

Join the Disruptive Movement!

  




Sunni Brown

Author, The Doodle Revolution

Blog







PART 1: MY FAVORITE DISRUPTIVE HERO

“I did not come from a stable background. The destabilization of my earlier years was helpful in many ways. It drives creativity, it drives ambition, it drives compassion…so I wouldn’t ever change it.



“But it also has a dark side which is that it’s very hard to harness energy that’s not destructive. And it’s hard to the very high level of aspirational goals because a lot of you is caught up in self-maintenance. You have to take better care of yourself than a person who had not had that destabilizing life. So it bleeds a lot of energy off.



“I have a Zen teacher, Flint Sparks. He’s one of my disruptive heroes. An incredible man! He’s a Buddhist priest, and also a clinical psychologist. I’ve been working with him for a few years, and from him I’ve learned an extraordinary amount of personal leadership, compassion and courage, and how to align to your aspirations.



“Flint has completely made it possible to liberate a lot of energy that has been fixed or conditioned in a crappy way, so that I could apply it to creativity and possibilities.”


FOR MORE: See her video below




Let's Disrupt This!

We are our history and experiences. They made up who we are and who we were. But they do not have to determine who we are becoming and who we will be. Those are within our control. 



Sunni choose to share something we all need to examine. That is: How we liberate our own energies that have been fixed on negativity or keep us trapped in our past




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Stop the Suckiness!

For more than two decades, I have studied how companies make it hard for employees to do their best and be their best.  


For example, we found how complicated companies make work. We also found how they way-under-appreciate GenY, the latest work generation. We also found how so many employees are hacking around corporate stupidity. And we found that by dragging their feet on Work 2.0, most companies seem to be at war with their workforce.

  

Why do these problems persist…still? Because you (if not you individually…definitely the workforce as a whole) are complicit in this suckiness. As a whole, you tolerate it.

  

Isn't it time to stop this suckiness? One person at a time, one day at a time, it can be done! 



Make more awesome every day! Work around these wasteful sucks. Tolerate these sucks no more!

(All of the following are available on Pinterest) 

3-2-1 Rule: An Unbelievable Awesome Day!

I study people having sucky days. And I study people having unbelievably awesome days. If you want less of the former and more of the latter, here's a simple rule to guide each of your days. It absolutely works. Guaranteed!  



3. Three Must-Dos every day

Of course, your To Do list is filled with far more than three Must Dos. But remember the 80/20 rule… 80% of your results, success and awesomeness will come from just three of your many To Dos. Narrowing your focus and your energy makes you more awesome! (For more on just those three Must Dos, see Fast Co's What Successful People Do piece.)



2. Two Great-Help Moments every day

At least twice a day, help someone else be the best version of themselves: Helpful advice or mentoring. Show them a helpful workaround or tip. Share an Aha you once had. 



Not just for customers or people you're supposed to help (like your direct reports). But for teammates and others where there's no direct requirement to do so. You will be amazed at what happens next. Your Pay It Forward moments will be paid back to you. Guaranteed. You're actually making tomorrow a more awesome day for you if you make somebody else's today more awesome.



1. One New Learning every day

At least once a day, ask a question you've never asked before. Or a question no one else dare asks. Or seek out new information or new experiences you've never been exposed to before. Or try a new food or restaurant or route home or a new-to-you routine. 



Learn or experience something new every day. Doesn't matter whether it's a big aha or little "Oh, now I see." Doing so will keep you fresh, more adventurous, more attuned to the world around you, etc. Each learning will be the foundation for future awesome days!



Go have an awesome 3-2-1 day!

The Ultimate 60-Second Power-Down

1440.

Most every keynote, workshop and consulting gig, I find I need to remind everyone of that number: The number of minutes in a day. Limited. Finite. We need to make the best use of both our time and our attention. Both are precious.



It's time to do more about this. You must pay more attention to what and who you give your attention to. It's essential that, at least once per day, you step away from the noise and clutter and let your mind and body chill — powering down for just a bit.



Relationships will get better. Your ideas will be better. You'll have more energy. The whole world will taste and feel and look and sound better! 



And all the time that takes is 60 seconds.



Crucial soundbites from a great NYTimes article on Mindfulness: Getting Its Share of Attention:



• On the eve its going public, Twitter's co-founder Evan Williams did the unthinkable: He went for a 20-minute walk without his phone. "I was actually able to look around and think about things," he said. Something he's been working on. "I'm better with those silences now."



• Whil.com is launching their business with a site focused on helping people power down for just 60 seconds per day. Says Whil's co-founder Chip Wilson, "Getting away from the chaos and technology even for one minute is all you really need to feel refreshed."



Sure, full-out walks or runs or time-outs or meditation blocks are best. But even if you only have time for a Power Time Out — a 60-second power-down — you must do it. Every day.



The video below walks you through the how to's...  


How to meditate in 60 seconds. from Whil on Vimeo.

Strategy Only Matters If...

In the current issue of McKinsey Quarterly are two great articles on the Art of Strategy as well as Mastering the Building Blocks of Strategy. Good insights on where strategy development is headed...

• Deeper analytical rigor

• Deeper understanding of psychology and adult learning (…For the >senior execs< who are developing the strategies)

• Greater discipline behind resource allocation

• Greater emphasis on micro-markets to achieve overall market superiority



And then there's this when it comes to strategy implementation: "…Designing a social process such that [senior execs/strategy designers] can really grapple with the big ideas and come to grips with changing deeply held biases about what the company should do. Because in the end, it’s a year or two away when the big calls will happen, and in their gut, if they haven’t actually grappled, if they haven’t actually changed their beliefs, if they don’t have conviction, then the strategy won’t actually get implemented."



See the problem? Deep senior exec grappling and deep senior exec conviction isn't about execution!!! It's about planning and alignment. 



Senior execs don't implement shit! People on the front lines and in back rooms and team meetings do that! People who make and deliver and sell products do that. People who serve customers do that.



If McKinsey and their clients are truly interested in strategy execution, they need to be just as rigorous and disciplined about powerfully condensing that grappling-sense-making-understanding that senior execs go through for the masses.



There are many who do just that, creating experiences for the workforce that enable them to figure out, on their own, why and how new strategies are needed — reliving the grappling, belief-changing and conviction-forming experience for themselves.



Among the many who do that are Root Learning's Learning Maps, Alexander Osterwalder's Strategyzer, and the Jensen Group's Message Maps.















Yet every model and tool that helps the masses in grappling / belief-changing / conviction-forming has one thing in common: the art and discipline of storytelling! 



Why? Because throughout human history, storytelling has been hard-wired into us as the primary way we make sense of things. Strategies are business logic and analytical sense-making, storytelling is human-reality-common-sense sense-making. 



Here is the anatomy of a Message Map, based on the anatomy of a story.





  

One More Time: Killing Overload

For more than two decades, the one simplicity question I still hear is "How do I deal with the overload?" or variations like "How do I delete more?"  


One more time…

For this post, I'll borrow from Jocelyn Glei, whose advice on Behance is very similar to my workshops.

  

1. Define Your Own Rules of Engagement

Not the company's. Not your peers'. Not your teammates'. Yours!





Not every message is created equal. Most of us have no more than 25 or so people (customers, boss, friends, family) whose messages MUST get answered right away and with most attention. Almost all others fall into the "I can come back to it" category.



Rules of Engagement also mean WHEN you'll deal with messages. Very few of those senders actually do need super-immediate responses. Most can wait — at least a little. Do NOT answer in real-time! Allow yourself some down-times! Set up a disciplined schedule — (say four or so times a day, or whatever works best for you) — and STICK TO IT!



2. Use Tech to Keep You On Track 

Filter, filter, filter! 

If you don't know how, a few ideas to get you started:

• Outlook filters: Here and here

• Managing Twitter

• Filter and Manage Your Entire Online Social Life

Think of setting these up not as yet another tech chore… These filters and organizers and synthesizers are your traffic cops — they help you enforce your own Rules of Engagement. 



3. Manage Expectations 

Communicate your Rules of Engagement so people know — up front — when you'll be getting back to them, and how you prefer information communicated to you. Standard ways of doing this are:

• Face to face conversations with teammates

• Out of the Office responses

• Email footers and notes and auto-responses on web-based and social communications

As Glei says: Your greatest weapon against overload is setting other people's expectations



4. Channels: Constantly Prune, Delete, Edit

Less is more!

You are probably over-subscribed to too many social media channels, you probably get too many newsletters, you probably have too many apps feeding too much to you.



At least once per month, schedule some editing and pruning time. And keep scheduling it. Be as disciplined about this as you are numbers 1, 2 and 3.



Follow these four simple steps (with discipline) and you will tame the overload beast! 

Put It Down! Turn It Off!

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

Join the Disruptive Movement!

  




Mark Fidelman

Author, Socialized

Raynforest site







MY DISRUPTIVE CHALLENGE

Mobile Devices. “It’s the same as what I’m excited about. I find myself tuning in to a mobile device sometimes when I should be paying more attention to my kids.



“The worst offender contributing to this is a game called Candy Crush. It becomes so addicting that that’s what you’re doing instead of hanging out your family.



“There is an addictive quality to our mobile devices. Just look at people walking down the streets these days. Four years ago, they weren’t all staring into their phone. Now they’re all bumping into each other because they’re so into their phone.



“We’ve got to figure out a healthy balance. I know everybody says that…but we really do have to figure that out.”


FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

Mark is simply being more honest than most of us. We all know we have to figure out a better balance between our online activities and our actual lives, yet how many of us actually do that! 



Every one of your devices has an off button. Use it! If you can’t… At least pick x-hours per day in which you’ll only look at the people around you, or only engage in that activity with the phone or pad in the other room or in your purse.



Let’s start living the life we want inscribed on our tombstone!




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Tackling Our Froms and Tos

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

Join the Disruptive Movement!

  




James Beshara

Co-Founder, Crowdtilt







MY DISRUPTIVE CHALLENGE

From Building a Product to Building a Company. “Going from having my hands on everything to building a company where I’ve got to learn to work through others to get things done.



“We like the macro disruptive changes as a startup…Those are great…Those are opportunities. But those aren’t challenges. The biggest challenges in my life are the micro disruptions in how vastly different it is to build a product and build a company.



“As a personal control freak — going from having my hands and eyes on everything to now working through other individuals — that’s a really big change that’s a constant daily challenge.”


FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

You don’t have to be an entrepreneur or live James’ life to ‘get’ his challenge. We’re all experiencing, living it. 



Every day each of us is encountering some disruptive change that requires us to go FROM one way of being TO a new way of being. 



Know that you are not alone. Everyone else is experiencing the same thing. 



Know that the best way through it is to seek out others who are going through a similar FROM and TO.




What do you think? Please post...

• On Twitter: #DareToDisrupt

• Or on DisruptMovement.com