Dodo Loves Marketing

How should we reach out to the people on the committee?

Your goal in dealing with the committee is not to walk in unprepared, but rather to do the necessary work up-front to reach out to all the members of the group before your meeting. This may mean a long series of phone calls, e-mails, and even face-to-face meetings before your committee presentation. Only you can determine whether this investment of time and effort is worth it. However, in deals that carry high price tags, it is quite common for a committee to deliver the final recommendation, and it may well be worth identifying the key players and discussing their priorities ahead of time. ..more

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Recall that one of our Wrong Reflexes is Non-communication. We too eagerly disengage from the other, withdraw, escape to safety behind a wall of inaccessibility.

Being unavailable for contact ensures that conflict remains unresolved. A sage once said, ‘Abstinence from communication is the essence of conflict‘. Without doubt, no resolution is possible without communication. So, the first and most fundamental requirement is to establish a time in which communication can occur.

It works even betterwhen both people know it. But on many occasions you alone will initiate and actively manage the process. So we will assume that you are solely responsible. ..more

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The purpose of planning the context, is to create a setting for effective communication.

Location

A private place that is free from interruptions should be selected. Importantly, phone calls and people walking in should be prevented. Even music should be eliminated. Moving objects or people are visual distractions. The meeting should occur in a private room that other people will not inadvertently enter. A place where neither person feels on home turf, or a site preferred by your Other is best. ..more

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Reality-Testing

Unless perceptions are tested against objective reality (what the Other really means), inaccuracies can grow. Talking together tests the accuracy of our perceptions against the replies of our partner. Effective day-to-day management of interpersonal differences requires conversation.

When interdependency is high and time for communication is limited, the burden on both persons’ abilities to efficiently check out perceptions is heavy. Being busy people, time is seldom so abundant that the burden of reality-testing does not occasionally exceed our abilities to communicate, to hear and understand the Other. ..more

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Everyone has talents—recurring patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that can be applied productively. Simply put, everyone can probably do at least one thing better than ten thousand other people. However, each person is not necessarily in a position to use her talents. Even though she might initially have been selected for her talents, after a couple of reshuffles and lateral moves, she may now be miscast.

If you want to turn talent into performance, you have to position each person so that you are paying her to do what she is naturally wired to do. You have to cast her in the right role. ..more

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Although great managers are committed to the concept of “fairness,” they define it rather differently from most people. In their mind “fairness” does not mean treating everyone the same. They would, say that the only way to treat someone fairly is to treat them as they deserve to be treated, bearing in mind what they have accomplished. Jimmy Johnson, the coach who led the Dallas Cowboys to two Super Bowl rings and who now manages the Miami Dolphins, captures their atti_ tude toward “fairness.” He made this point in a speech to the Miami players immediately after taking the reins from Don Shula: ..more

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There’s a great deal you can learn from spending time with your strugglers. You can learn why certain systems are hard to operate. You can learn why initiatives are poorly designed. You can learn why clients become unhappy. And over time, you can become, as some managers are, highly articulate in describing the anatomy of failure and its various cures.

Ironically, none of this is going to help you understand what excellence looks like. You cannot learn very much about excellence from studying failure. Of all the infinite number of ways to perform a certain task, most of them are wrong. There are only a few right ways. Unfortunately you don’t come any closer to identifying those right ways by eliminating the wrong ways. Excellence is not the opposite of failure. It is just different. It has its own configuration, which sometimes includes behaviors that look surprisingly similar to the behaviors of your strugglers. ..more

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The language of “average” is pervasive. Reservation centers calculate the “average” number of calls a customer service representative can handle in an hour. Restaurant chains project staffing needs by estimating how many servers are needed to staff the “average” restaurant. In sales organizations, territories are divided up based on how many prospects the “average” salesperson can handle. “Average” is everywhere. ..more

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Each year, buoyed by the hope that leaders are made, not born, tens of thousands of budding executives traipse off to leadership development courses. Here they discover the many different traits and competencies that constitute the model leader. They receive feedback from their peers and direct reports, feedback that reveals the peaks and valleys of their unique leadership profile. Finally, after all the learning and reflection is complete, the hard work begins. Each willing participant is asked to craft a plan to fill in those valleys, so that he can reshape himself into the model leader, smooth and well-rounded. ..more

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Before televisions combine with computers, you would think TV sets would combine with videocassette recorders. You can buy combination TV/VCRs, of course, but most people don’t. Recently we visited a consumer electronics store that had a wall full of such products.

“How are sales of your combination television/VCRs?” we asked the clerk. “Infinitesimal,” he replied.

Nor are many combination washer/dryers sold. Or microwave/stoves. Or telephone/telephone answering machines. Or copier/printer/fax machines. ..more

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b. Satisfactions

Everyone breathes different psychological oxygen. What is fulfilling for one person is asphyxiating for another.

Great accountants love the fact that two plus two equals four every time they do it. Great salespeople get a kick out of turning a no into a yes. Great flight attendants gravitate toward the tired, angry business traveler or the boisterous school sports team at the back, because they enjoy turning around the tough customers. ..more

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Here are two, of the infinite number of possible answers:

“I think it is very important to be persistent, particularly if you really believe in your ideas. We really encourage that kind of candor here. With my team, if I have a suggestion that others disagree with, I know they will expect me to keep supporting my idea until somebody comes up with a better one. In fact, it happens all the time.” ..more

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1. MAKE SURE THE TALENT INTERVIEW STANDS ALONE

Recruiting can be a complicated process. The candidate has to learn about you, the company, the role, and the details of his compensation. You have to check his résumé, make him an offer; he may counter, you then resubmit your offer; and so the negotiating continues until finally you both feel comfortable enough to commit. This process is important, but all of it should be handled separately from the talent interview. ..more

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How are you going to introduce the Interaction Method into your organization? You can’t go charging into a meeting tomorrow and say, “Hold it, everybody, we’re going to change the way we run our meetings!” People and organizations don’t like sudden changes. Don’t set yourself up for certain failure by rushing off and trying to change your meetings without a plan. ..more

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Sooner or later you’ve got to begin someplace. Why not with Your own group? Sometimes, because of organizational constraints, the only meetings you can affect are the ones in which You participate. It makes sense to test these ideas in your own back yard. There is no better place to develop your skills and gain experience. If you’re going to spend valuable time and energy participating in meetings, why not make them more productive and enjoyable? Here are eight steps you can take as manager/chairperson to introduce the Interaction Method into your meetings. ..more

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People often think of ‘networking‘ as something that is only done at high-powered levels. Not so. Letting mothers at the school gates know about your services, swapping information with friends at the rugby club is all networking. ‘I found that other mums were my best customers,’ says Sarita, a beauty therapist. ‘When my sons were invited to tea with their friends, they’d often mention that I ran a beauty business and I got plenty of of clients that way !’

You cannot afford to be too indirect about offering your services. On the other hand, old contacts may be put off if you continually pester them for work. It is better to engineer a meeting about another matter and then explain what you can do for them, rather than endlessly cold calling. Persistence may pay off — but it can also put people off. This is why ‘forums’ for networking are so important. ..more

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• First, do your homework. Find out if anyone else in the organization is working — or has worked — from home. Your union as well as the personnel department may know. If so, arrange to have a drink or meeting with them, to find out how they tackled the subject, how the arrangement works or, if it has stopped, why it ended.

• When I decided to move to the Isle of Bute, in Scotland, I thought I’d have to leave the bank,’ says Kevin Attwood, Strategic Planning Development Officer for Nat West who now works two days from home, and three in London. ‘In fact, I kept the move so quiet that when I told my boss I’d moved to Scotland over the weekend, he was flabbergasted. When we had lunch I said flippantly, that if I’d got my act together I would have come up with a strategic plan for teleworking. He told me to come up with a proposal. I rung up people in the bank who were already working from home some of the time and talked to them extensively before coming up with my plans. Listening to their experiences helped me make a convincing proposal.’ ..more
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Homeworkers also need to work especially hard at ensuring they know what is going on within the office and avoiding isolation.. When BT conducted a teleworking experiment, allowing some of its Inverness operators to work from home, they found that one of the main grumbles was that the operators felt they were not kept up to date with company news the way they had been in an office. For those who work only a couple of days at home, this can still be a problem. It pays to phone in on your days out and to take part in any social events in the office. When you are in the office, make sure everyone knows that you are there — and keep your wits about you. ‘I make sure that when I’m in the office, I listen very carefully to what’s going on,’ says Helene Hook of the computer firm ICL. Kevin Attwood of Nat West Bank has formalized the process by having an updating meeting with his boss every week. ..more

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Even if you know that your job is 100 per cent suited to working from home, you still need to ask yourself some hard questions about whether your personality is suitable for homeworking. See the quiz or ask yourself briefly :

How suitable am I for homeworking? If you get a buzz from being with people, love to be in the thick of things and can remember just who’s dating who in which department, homeworking may not be right for you. The same applies if much of your social life is based around the office or your place in the hierarchy is very important to you. On the other hand, if you are a self-starter, enjoy your own company in limited doses and find it easy to concentrate, you may be well placed to work from home. Confidence in your ability, self-discipline, a good network of local social contacts and enough space to work are all vital for a homeworker. ‘I thought that I would spend more time working at home than I actually did,’ says Ken Davey, who initiated Mercury Communications flexible work project. ‘I used it for writing reports and initiating strategy, but I came to realize how much of my job depended on interacting with colleagues.’ ..more

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1 Is where you work an important part of the job?

If clients always expect to see you at your place of work, it may be difficult to transfer to homeworking. A doctor working in a casualty department, for instance, is unlikely to be able to work outside the hospital for any length of time, since patients expect to be treated at the hospital and that is also where support staff are based. On the other hand, if much of your work is location independent, i.e. can be done anywhere, you are much more likely to be able to work from home for some of the time. ..more

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