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There are two types of power in organizations; hierarchical power and storytelling power.
Hierarchical power comes from position on an org chart. This is hard power endowed by title: Director of disruption, SVP of synergy, Grand Poobah of best practices. Your boss, and your boss’s boss. That power, simply put, is the ability to compel action. It's not absolute, and it can be abused.
The limits of hierarchical power are tested by culture, intransigence, lack of know-how, or the ability to work the system. You see its limits with a team that swirls, scrambles, or hunkers down. Faced with change, the unit motto is “This too shall pass.” Inaction leads to reaction; a spiral of bosshole behaviors: micromanagement, dismissiveness, or favoritism.
All of this can be remedied by the other type of power: storytelling power. This is a soft power that influences behavior and inspires action. It is the carrot to hierarchical power’s stick—the ability to shape culture, drive change, and create movements.
So, how do you tap into this storytelling superpower? Is there a silver bullet, a magic bean, or a genie in a lamp? Not quite. Instead, a humdrum list, hard work, and practice: six ways to up your storytelling game:
#1. Understand the structure and mechanics of story.
#2. Read, write, write.
#3. Get people and politics.
#4. Speak.
#5. Cultivate empathy.
#6. Collect and curate stories.
Stories are vehicles of influence; information daubed with emotion that wriggles into your brain. They have common elements: heroes, villains, inciting incidents, magic bullets, and highs and lows. The hero is your audience, the villain is the problem they're struggling with, the inciting incident is the spark of your idea, the magic bullet a solution, all strung together with “but,” “therefore,” and “meanwhile” to keep the highs high and the lows low.
Use tools to help you understand your audience, such as a T-leaf. Get comfortable with concrete language, and learn basic story structures—a hook, meat, and payoff.
Your structure carries the story, giving a familiar and followable cadence. Use visuals to amplify the mechanics of your story—to highlight major points, explain nuanced topics, or help people remember.
Words are the fundamental unit of communication. Business storytelling requires that you string them together in a commercially rewarding order. That you choose words that stick. Vivid, relatable phrases to inspire.
This starts by paying attention to what moves you. This could be a line of dialogue, a lyric, or a passage in a book. Rarely is it a bullet on a PowerPoint slide. That wordplay, with statistical certainty, will be a rhetorical device: a metaphor, a word hack, allusions, or parallels.
Write for clarity, brevity, and impact. Author and writer Nicolas Cole advises a rapid rate of reveal—make your point and move on. Don't dwell or meander, slot your argument together quickly, each line punching through a new piece of information.
Use emojis. 😉 Founders of news organization Axios, and authors of the book, Smart Brevity, Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz, have fully embraced the humble emoji as a cornerstone of the modern world. In their words, “Take an emoji for a 🏃. Your results will be a 🥇.”
One last tip to practice in your writing, from Gary Provost, author of 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing. “Don’t just write words. Write music.”
Storytelling is human engineering. The engineering part is easy, the human part is hard. Understanding those humans, their wants and needs, hopes and fears, is basic physics. So too, is navigating the political currents they swim in.
The motive triangle is a simple tool to divine the agenda of your audience. Never mind the ruthless logic of your business case, what are your audience’s secret wishes? What are their hopes and fears?
Answering that question gives you insight into their agenda—a baby step in negotiating organizational politics. Add to that a sense of timing and optics—when to position something and how. Using opportunities to presell ideas, or using your political capital to gain air cover. Politics, in this sense, isn't a dirty word, it's a Latin one: gravitas, the weight and influence you hold within the organization.
Tailor your stories to address the concerns, interests, and aspirations of different audiences; make your narrative relevant and persuasive.
“It” —whatever it is, has to sound good. Word choice gets you some of the way, but the way you say it carries even more weight. Tone, emphasis, and pacing can turn whatever you say into something better. This is why Morgan Freeman reading a shopping list sounds profound.
Before you rush out for elocution lessons, remember there is no one right way to present. Robin Williams was frenetic. Steven Wright is deadpan. Where Williams would electrify a crowd with his energetic delivery, Wright would use simple, mundane phrases that, on their own, aren't particularly funny. However, his monotonous tone, slow pacing, and deliberate pauses make the delivery work. For example, he might say, "I spilled spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone." The humor doesn't just come from the clever wordplay, but from the way Wright delivers it—completely deadpan, as if it's a serious matter.
In speaking—especially in a business context—you want to be authentically you, but the best version of you. Are you clear and concise? How do you add ‘entertaining?’ Are you witty and memorable, but need to be more crisp? Know what’s missing and work on it.
Whether you're presenting an idea, giving feedback, or telling a story, how you speak can make all the difference in engaging and persuading your audience. It's not just what you say, but how you say it.
Storytelling is an exercise in emotion. It’s minimal. With a story conveying some information and sensation, it leaves the audience to fill in gaps. Ultimately, a story is a shared experience between the teller and the told. Subtlety and nuance, not technical detail, make a story sing.
Empathy plays a crucial role in creating emotional impact. People will forget what you said, but—according to Maya Angelou—they will never forget how you made them feel. Empathy, as a storyteller, is the fuel for context and subtext.
Cognitive empathy, aka "perspective-taking," aka “walking in someone else’s shoes,” provides a glimpse into what someone else is feeling or thinking. It allows storytellers to tailor messages that resonate, ensuring relevance and effectiveness.
Compassionate empathy; caring for and wanting to help your audience, fosters trust, encouraging the audience to engage with you as a storyteller. This form of empathy is not just about understanding or sharing someone’s feelings, but also about being moved to supportive action.
Empathy goes beyond sharing stories, it forges bonds.
Everyone has experiences. Life, happening in moments that are funny or sad, surprising or routine. We all have triumphs and disappointments. Your job as a storyteller is to collect and hone them. Figure out what makes the story work; what to keep in, and what to leave out. What to embellish, and what to downplay.
These become your signature stories. A repository of narratives that suit the situation. They have a moral, a surprise, or a lesson learned. They establish a point of view or highlight a value. There are origin stories—how you started in a particular place or field; stories of triumph over adversity, with a moral to keep going; horror stories of mistakes you have made and learned from.
They all have one thing in common—they're compelling. But that’s not all. They stick in the mind, becoming stories your audience won’t easily forget. They’re relatable, striking a chord with universal truths we all share.
Most importantly, they're authentic, grounded in reality that cuts through the noise. This authenticity gives your stories weight, making them more than just narratives. They resonate, leaving a lasting impact and sometimes, maybe a little, prompting change.
Almost 4,000 subscribers, nearly 60 articles, and a good chunk of them about storytelling. Here they are, organized for you.
Why do we make it so complicated?
Simplicity is a leadership superpower that combats the villain of complication by making complex processes and communications clear and accessible.
Cut through the noise by framing your message effectively and inspiring action to ensure clear and impactful communication.
We’re not as concrete as we could be.
Concrete language improves communication by making complex ideas clearer, actionable, and memorable, avoiding the pitfalls of abstraction.
Good communication requires clarity, simplicity, and relevance to effectively capture attention and convey messages in an overwhelming information landscape.
Emotion is the crucial ingredient that transforms a well-reasoned narrative into a compelling story that moves people to action.
Use novel, attention-grabbing words to engage your audience, but avoid overuse to keep your message fresh and impactful.
Three little words to tell a better story.
Use "but," "therefore," and "meanwhile" to create engaging and logical connections in your storytelling, avoiding monotonous and boring narratives.
Begin your presentation with a strong hook to capture attention, making your message compelling from the start.
Engage your audience by starting with a strong hook and using narrative techniques that evoke emotion and convey information effectively.
Business needs stories to effectively exchange information and influence decisions, ultimately increasing value and creating a shared context for success.
The greatest data story ever told.
Effective data storytelling is about making clear, concise, and relevant comparisons that evoke emotion and stick in the audience's memory.
Most people don't understand their company's strategy because it's often buried in complex jargon and lacks clear communication.
Seven stories of leadership and change.
Effective leadership during change requires telling clear, consistent stories that provide clarity, purpose, and direction, helping people navigate uncertainty and understand their roles.
Building blocks and strategic narrative.
A strategic narrative combines clear strategy with compelling stories to align and engage people, driving successful change.
There are two stories essential to driving change in a business: Story 1 and Story 2. Story 1 is about the journey, Story 2 is the destination. To lead change, it’s essential to tell both stories.
Mastering message discipline involves delivering clear, consistent, and emotionally engaging communication to drive alignment and action.
Effective product storytelling turns ideas into compelling narratives that emotionally engage and resonate with different audiences, driving adoption and success.
Leaders use memorable phrases to teach key values like accountability, improvement, vision, hard work, knowledge, action, service, and teamwork.
On a cold April day in Portland, Oregon, in 2010, Dan McLaughlin putted for two hours. Dan, a commercial photographer, had never played 18 holes of golf in his life. Those two hours on a putting green were the start of an ambitious journey. Dan set out to test Dr. K. Anders Erickson’s 10,000-hour theory. He had 9,998 hours to go.
The 10,000-hour theory proposed by Erickson is this—it takes 10,000 hours of what Erickson called deliberate practice to excel at any skill. Erickson noted, “Elite performers engage in what we call ‘deliberate practice’–an effortful activity designed to improve individual target performance.” He found top practitioners—in any field— needed roughly 10,000 hours of ‘deliberate practice’ to become world-class.
Malcolm Gladwell, Geoff Colvin, and—can you believe it?—Justin Beiber have popularized the 10,000-hour theory.
At 5,100 hours, four years and halfway into the ‘Dan Plan,’ McLaughlin was a 3.3 handicap golfer. Then his back gave out.
You can get better at anything you do, any skill, with deliberate practice. Obviously, there are limits, as Dan found out. Outside factors: age, opportunities to train, your physicality, dexterity... Perhaps the largest limit is the muscle between your ears — do you have the passion and persistence to get better?
Dan did.
He went from a hacker to a three-handicap golfer in under four years.
If you want, with time and deliberate practice, you can improve at anything, whether it’s cooking or critical thinking, lacrosse or leadership, dancing, or data visualization.
Six practices will sweeten your deliberate practice:
#1. Enjoy the process.
#2. Break practice down.
#3. Make feedback work for you.
#4. Practice at the edge of your comfort zone.
#5. Use tools and play games.
#6. Keep going.
If you believe you can’t, you won’t.
If you don’t like it, despite all the willpower in the world, you won’t do it. To get better at anything, you must learn and practice. Enjoy the process; turn learning and rehearsal into a virtuous cycle. That cycle is a flywheel of positive feedback.
Begin with the belief that you can improve through practice.
Belief is your motivational fuel. Start your study with the parts you enjoy. Take any skill. You might enjoy research—hate public speaking—but, you want to improve.
To get started, start with what you like. In this case, it might be researching what “good looks like” in public speaking. You may move on to active listening, paying attention to what people say and how they say it.
That’s the first step on the flywheel.
You’re starting to enjoy the process. As you enjoy the process, you engage more deeply. Focus is easier. Learning improves. Note small improvements. You might reflect, doodle, or journal your journey.
The more you see improvement, the more you believe you can.
Mix fun elements into your routine. Perhaps you’re listening to your favorite music while you drill. You may choose to rehearse in inspiring or comfortable settings. Try habit stacking—incorporate your training into something you already habitually do and enjoy. If you enjoy walking the dog, try running through routines that are part of your practice while you do it.
Above all, celebrate the tiniest victories. They add fuel to keep you going.
Skills are made from smaller skills.
Good golfers can hole three-foot putts with metronomic reliability. They can bomb drives and shape shots. They’re confident chippers and great green readers.
All a host of small skills; never practiced all at once.
Effective communicators are clear thinkers. They’re active listeners who pay full attention to others. They speak clearly, often in threes or repetitive structures. They have picked up, by osmosis or study, rhetorical devices in their repertoire. They tell stories; they know when to pause; when to breathe. They know their own verbal fillers and tics and work on them.
To practice deliberately, break out sub-skills and work on them.
Chunk the sub-skills you are after into checklists to track progress and ensure thorough preparation. Two seemingly opposite, science-backed approaches work here—sequential tasking and interleaving skills.
Sequential tasking is best used early in learning.
Build the foundational skills you need—hitting a ball or creating a logical talk track. Sequential tasking suggests that you pursue the next logical step once you have the first small skill down. Once you have a clear talk track, you might want to figure out how to edit it for rhythm. Both are separate but related sub-skills.
Interleaving skills places you on the path to mastery.
Here, you alternate between related skills during training sessions. Take a critical presentation, and instead of working from beginning to end, tackle the middle. Later in the session, you might rehearse your opening. You might switch to transitions, then tackle answering tricky questions.
Interleaving skills is a fancy term for practicing chunks in random order. This method of switching deepens learning and retention; it’s a good proxy for real-world situations—prepping you for when, inevitably, things don’t go to plan.
Olympic athletes and Formula One drivers use feedback.
They study film, pore over data, and bring in coaches to give them guidance in real time. Feedback can work for you, too, but first, you have to learn to like it. In business, this is tough because most feedback is delivered poorly.
Establish feedback loops for yourself.
These feedback loops can be formal or informal. At fassforward, my co-CEO, Dave Frost, and I run a 360 on ourselves every year. It’s the same process we use with our coaching clients, but it has a double benefit for us. First—we get candid, thoughtful, and themed feedback on our performance and areas of opportunity. Second, we get to experience the process ourselves—eat our own dog food or drink our own champagne—and find ways to improve the process.
Digital feedback tools are helpful. Hemingway app, for example, is a tool that delivers real-time critique of your writing. You might use polling tools like Slido in your presentations to build interaction and see what’s landing.
Encourage constructive criticism on the team. Run “why it’s good” sessions. These sessions look at the work product of the team (or related work product). Setting aside the time and space for teams to think deeply about their work builds the lesser-used muscle of critique and creates a safe space where constructive feedback is valued. It allows you to regularly review each others’ work to provide insights.
The rise of AI gives you another powerful feedback tool. You can use it to find key opportunities. Prompt ChatGPT (or whatever tool you use) with the raw material you wish to improve—this could be captured feedback, the transcript of a Zoom call, or your work product, and prompt the AI for feedback. Use terms like “themes,” “polarities,” or “unusual ideas” in the prompt.
This will render a more palatable, easily digestible view.
Don’t practice from a couch.
This metaphorical advice is, perhaps, the most important element of your practice. Practice can’t be too easy. Stress teaches us. It rewires our grey matter.
Neuroscientist and author Friederike Fabritius argues that we all have a “sweet spot” of stress. Too little arousal and we get no benefit; too much, and our performance diminishes. Our brains want to conserve energy, so we won't reach our full potential unless challenged. Without some stress, we’re bored and unfocused.
In short, we need to get to the edge of our comfort zone.
Fabritius advises finding our optimal stress point, which "occurs when you are just slightly over-challenged. ... We need to experience fun to get into flow, and a little bit of fear is just the trick we need to get there.”
In flow, we are distraction-free, with complete concentration on the task at hand. Time slows. Things become easier. We’re at the tipping point between challenge and skill. It’s our state of peak performance and where we should aim to practice.
We can nudge ourselves there through controlled challenges, slowly increasing the difficulty of the task at hand and increasing stress. We can simulate high pressure. Use time constraints, peer pressure, or role-play complex situations, all ratcheting up stress and pushing us to the edge of our comfort zone.
Practice in a stressful place at a challenging pace.
Fun is part of flow.
Dopamine flows—we feel good. Our brains tickle with endorphins—the pain relievers that give us a “runner’s high.” A squirt of oxytocin—the cuddle hormone—kicks in. This is crucial to the process of forgetting old learned behavior, allowing us to learn the new.
This is why games work.
Gamification has been over-used in learning. It’s become a hodge-podge of points and scoring, badges, rewards, and leaderboards. Challenges and quests compete with levels and progression, storytelling, narrative, and visual design.
And in all that, we can’t forget the fun.
You don’t need badges. We made up games in the schoolyard; you can do it for yourself and your teams decades later. Just rid yourself of the professional embarrassment of childish things and embrace your inner child.
Build tools.
After all, that is the most basic human characteristic. We picked up stones to cut, chop, and scrape. We made fire. Bring that tool-making to your practice.
Use basic apps like MURAL or Miro to create frameworks, simulators, and collaboration spaces.
Like anything in life, you have to keep going.
The wonder drug that makes you an overnight expert hasn’t been invented yet. If the books are right, you might need to dedicate 10,000 hours. So you must keep going.
Put aside time. Set yourself a schedule. Set micro-quotas to bring you back to practice. Create rituals. Little routines that enhance your focus and readiness. Teach others. You get better by helping others get better. It deepens your understanding. Explaining, showing, and answering questions are all on the path to mastery.
Along the way, embrace errors. Every mistake is an opportunity to learn.
To quote Dan McGlaughlin, “The word ‘talent’ gets thrown around too much. What makes someone ‘talented’ is a single-mindedness to push through the lows and to allow themselves to change and grow.”¹
If that’s true, your skill at anything you do is dependent on your focus, the work you put in, and how you practice. Ask yourself first what skill you want to develop. Do you practice? And then, do you deliberately practice?
Talent isn’t genetic or ordained. It comes from work and will.
At fassforward, we don't just offer intern work experience; we ignite their potential and transform it into excellence.
Our interns don't just participate; they lead, innovate, and collaborate. We believe that by equipping young professionals with essential skills and providing them with opportunities to contribute meaningfully, we can foster the next generation of leaders.
In this article, we share key insights and experiences from our current interns, Logan and Adam, to help you refine and enhance your own intern programs.
Whether you're looking to increase productivity, improve collaboration, or encourage initiative, these firsthand accounts offer practical advice and inspiration.
Logan: At fassforward, much of your work will involve having a solid understanding of technology and how to use it to enhance your productivity.
We embrace AI as a powerful tool to enhance our consulting and coaching services. Learning to leverage AI is key to streamlining tasks and boosting efficiency. One of my own personal go-to tools throughout my internship is ChatGPT, which replicates natural speech patterns to our work faster and more productive.
Another tool we frequently rely on is Google Sheets. During my time at The University of Richmond, I learned various Google Sheets formulas and shortcuts that significantly enhance efficiency. One specific project I did employing my skills at fassforward is using a formula to connect information between two separate workbooks. These skills have proven invaluable in my daily workflows at fassforward, enabling me to analyze data more quickly, create detailed reports, and streamline numerous tasks.
Adam: An advantage of having a well-developed tech structure is that communication is super easy. As a hybrid office, we have to be flexible as we work. By using Google Suite, I’m able to quickly connect and collaborate. Instead of waiting for an email chain for clarification or the next steps, I’m able to quickly hop on a call and make progress.
Another key feature of our tech suite is Mural, a virtual whiteboard essential for virtual teamwork. While there was a brief learning curve, it quickly became my most powerful tool. I can use it as a central spot for ideation, compare workshop formats, and tie together big ideas, all on the same board as my teammates.
Through the efforts of my mentors and I, my understanding of our tech suite enables me to tackle projects faster and produce better outcomes. Taking the time to begin this process has yielded great results.
Logan: Collaboration is especially important for interns. My fellow intern, Adam, and I are teaming up to develop AI models to integrate companywide, aimed at boosting the company's efficiency.
Working together allows us to combine our skills and ideas, proving that two brains really are better than one. By pooling our resources and expertise, we're able to tackle challenges more effectively and innovate in ways we couldn't on our own.
Working with my mentor, Cristina,and absorbing the insights and lessons she’s shared has been one of the most positive experiences of my internship so far. Cristina has been incredible, not just in teaching me essential business skills and guiding me through various projects, but also in explaining why these skills and projects matter. She’s made me feel like I have a genuine role at fassforward, giving me confidence and a sense of belonging within the team. Her mentorship goes beyond just the tasks at hand; it’s about understanding the bigger picture and my contribution to it.
Adam: The greatest privilege I’ve had throughout this internship is developing a great relationship with my mentor, Brandon. As our creative director, Brandon touches on almost every application of creativity and design thinking in the firm. The conversations we have are beyond simple technical competence, and I get to learn from years of experience in leadership, work ethic, and finding purpose. Having the opportunity to learn from and work alongside a veteran creative thinker is helping me grow like never before.
Logan: Being conscious of your role and presence when working with others is key. If you're collaborating on a project and recognize your strengths in one area while acknowledging that your colleague excels in another, it's important to communicate that openly.
Additionally, understanding how others not only communicate but also think can help you better connect with them. At fassforward, we use a tool called the Thinking Patterns survey, which helps leaders identify and appreciate the diverse ways people process information and make decisions. This insight allows for more effective collaboration and ensures everyone's strengths are leveraged to achieve the best outcomes.
Sharing this awareness not only fosters a more collaborative environment but also ensures that everyone can play to their strengths, leading to a more successful outcome.
Adam: At fassforward, we often refer to our thinking styles to help discuss strengths and weaknesses. (I personally am an Evangelist!). This helps us identify how we can help contribute to projects, and potential blind spots.
In our internships, we are applying ourselves further, honing in on areas of growth. I’ve developed confidence in my attention to detail through workshop review projects, identifying key opportunities for further engagement. I’ve also grown my comfort in a rapidly changing professional setting. My contributions to engaging projects have pushed my creative mindset into overdrive.
Logan: I'm juggling multiple projects simultaneously, so I prefer not to be frequently checked on or assigned tasks sporadically. Instead, I like to receive all my work at once. This approach might make it seem like I have a lot to handle at once, so I need to prioritize my tasks and set clear deadlines.
For example, the "Touch/Task" tool is a method used at fassforward to help leaders balance the relationship with their team members alongside the tasks that need to be accomplished.
Understanding the touch and task balance is crucial here; touch refers to the level of interaction and check-ins, while task focuses on the specific work that needs to be done. By minimizing touch and managing tasks efficiently, I can maintain a productive workflow.
Adam: I prefer to hone in on one individual project, but I always have more on my plate. Having great time management skills has been crucial to my success across my workshop engagement projects, strategy gamification work, and other collaborations. I’ve relied on setting personal deadlines, and establishing good planning through task breakdowns and Google calendar. This puts me ahead of schedule, and gives me room to dive in deep on my work.
Logan: At fassforward, our culture thrives on support and collaboration, where everyone works together to achieve our goals. Everyone here is more than willing to help if you just ask. It’s really important to reach out because if I don’t, I might miss out on valuable guidance and assistance. Internships are a fantastic opportunity to build your skills and gain insights, but it’s up to you to take the initiative. Set up meetings, engage with your colleagues, and learn from their experiences.
It’s all about being proactive and making the most of the resources and people around you. For instance, I'm really interested in the financial aspects of our business. I reached out to our Head of Finance, Max Cohen, and he's been incredibly helpful. Max has taken the time to walk me through various financial practices, including how to file invoices and handle expense reports. Thanks to his guidance, I've gained a much clearer understanding of our financial operations.
Adam: My favorite aspect of our culture is the encouragement of questions. When I want to understand the deeper purpose of a project, or how to prepare it for scale, there’s no information held back. When I’m targeting the minutia, like “why is this our shade of green,” I know that detail hasn’t been overlooked. And when I have ideas on how I can contribute, I know my voice will be heard.
But in order for my questions to be answered or my contributions acknowledged, I have to take initiative and reach out. Having an internship where I am not only supported, but encouraged to reach out has allowed me to achieve so much further than I thought possible.
Logan: Starting my internship at fassforward, everything was a fresh experience. The only thing I was certain about was that I would make mistakes. These mistakes, however, have been my gateway to new ideas and invaluable lessons.
Embracing a growth mindset during your internship is crucial because it helps you understand that progress isn't always straightforward and that mistakes are a natural part of the learning process
For example, one of my tasks as an intern is to create LinkedIn posts for fassforward. Initially, I wrote my first post in my own style instead of using fassforward's voice. After realizing my mistake, I took the opportunity to understand fassforward's unique language and style, enabling me to craft better posts in the future.
It might be intimidating to stumble as an intern, but accepting and learning from your mistakes is the key to gaining real, tangible insights.
Adam: Embarking on an internship with a growth mindset is needed to get down to execute.
As a newcomer to any organization, you’ll lack context and knowledge of long-standing projects. Asking questions help, but you may not know the right questions to ask. And starting to create a project when you can’t clearly see the deliverable can feel impossible. All of this can be incredibly overwhelming.
A growth mindset reminds us that uncertainty is okay. More than that, the current murkiness is needed for clearer waters in the future. With that in mind, fear can transform from paralyzing, to motivating. When I set out to design a new system or solution, a little uncertainty is part of the game. Taking the creative confidence I’ve developed and applying it to my work at fassforward has let me complete the great work that I want to be doing.
While developing a new set of talk tracks for our workshops, I realized very quickly that I would need more familiarity with the content to do my best job. Instead of backing down, I was able to schedule viewings of live sessions with our coaches, and with extra effort, successfully completed my project. A few iterations were needed as I learned, but a growth mindset contributed to a great success.
Ready to take your internship program to the next level?
Incorporating the lessons highlighted by our fantastic interns can turn your internship experience from great to transformative.
Imagine interns who are highly productive, thanks to collaborative tools like Google Calendar and Mural. Now, add a supportive environment that encourages initiative and self-discovery through mentorship and collaboration. Combine that with a great mindset, and you’ve got a success story.
Together, we can nurture the next generation of leaders.
Leaders, I have noticed, tell stories.
Those stories aren’t always long-form. Often, it's a pithy, repeatable phrase that packs a lot of meaning. It is message discipline in the form of aphorisms (a pithy observation that contains a general truth) and axioms (a self-evidently true statement).
Denny Strigl, the former CEO of Verizon Wireless, who oversaw its meteoric growth, had a few. “Inspect what you expect” was an exhortation of accountability and attention to detail. “Shadow of a leader” was a phrase that packed a lot—the idea that everything we do as leaders communicates and has an outsized influence on the team and organization. His successor, Lowell McAdam, employed, “There’s always a higher gear.” An ode to iteration and constant improvement. At Mastercard, former CEO and Chairman Ajay Bhanga encapsulated his vision in “A world beyond cash.” Elon Musk, at SpaceX, goes even bigger—to “make life multiplanetary.”
This truth—that leaders boil down teaching and messaging to a few simple phrases has been around for a long time. It’s not just Stephen Covey, “beginning with the end in mind,” or Tony Robbins, “raising your standards.” The O.G. of leadership maxim-ization adorns the $100 bill—Ben Franklin.
On returning from England in 1726, Franklin started the Junta—a self-help group. He made his fortune in printing, publishing “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” and penned his own leadership guide, “The Way to Wealth,” in 1751.
Franklin preached practical wisdom and simple rules.
This aphorism from Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1736 encapsulates the idea that hard work pays off. It’s an idea that’s been around for a while.
Seneca, the Roman Stoic Philosopher, said, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." Thomas Jefferson may have picked the sentiment up from Franklin; he said, "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." The notion has transcended industries and disciplines. Sam Goldwyn, the film producer, said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” Golfer Gary Player borrowed and altered the quip, “The harder I practice, the luckier I get.”
However you phrase it—there’s no substitute for a good work ethic. Emphasizing the value of hard work is never a bad thing. Creating a culture of proactive effort and perseverance improves the odds of success.
Franklin wrote this in Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1738. It reflects his belief in making a significant contribution—contributing something valuable and lasting to the world.
The modern version of this is Steve Jobs’s, “We're here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here?” It’s a refrain you hear in various covers: To make your life a story worth telling. To do work that matters. To inspire and be inspired.
The aphorism elevates the twin virtues of communication and action. Encouraging innovation and creativity, leading by example, and building a legacy. It’s a notion that connects personal contribution and organizational success.
Another of Franklin’s philosophies from the 1758 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac—that learning, or knowledge, is the best investment.
Franklin was an avid learner. While he undoubtedly discovered this first-hand, the concept goes back to Aristotle in the 4th century BC, “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” Francis Bacon knew that “Knowledge is power.” Da Vinci was convinced that “Learning never exhausts the mind.” Franklin himself had another—perhaps better— axiom for this, “The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance.”
It’s an idea that’s repeated by Malcolm X, Gandhi, and B.B. King. Be a student. Be a teacher. Leaders who invest in learning and know-how create a footing for future success. Curiosity is the driver of innovation and the foundation of resilience.
Franklin has been credited with other similar sayings; “Well done is better than well said.” —which sadly doesn’t hold as much water as it used to, and "Speak little, listen much, and learn all you can."
This proverbial wisdom of actions outwitting and outweighing words goes back to Confucious, “The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.” The Roman playwright Plautus picked it up with “Let deeds match words.” In modern idiom, it’s “lead by example,” “walk the talk,” and “show, don’t tell.”
In leadership, showing, not telling, is an astute idea. I’ve written before of the Art Doctrine: “Do something, declare victory, and move on.” Franklin’s commentary is a critical reminder that “the most effective way to do it is to do it.” (Although this version is a cautionary tale, it’s Amelia Earhart’s.)
Although not appearing in Poor Richard, this is often attributed to Franklin.
The encouragement of service as a calling dates back to Lao Tzu, “A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” Humble leadership is reflected in the sayings of Gandhi, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others,” Albert Schweitzer, “The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others,” Martin Luther King, “Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve,” and Mother Teresa, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
“If you would be served, serve others” is a maxim that promotes servant leadership, builds strong relationships, encourages engagement and a positive work culture. It underscores responsibility and reciprocity.
Reputedly, Franklin said this in 1776—a declaration to teamwork and collaboration, spiced with ominous threat.
Again, it’s an old opinion. “United we stand, divided we fall” comes from one of Aesop’s fables, The Four Oxen and the Lion. “All for one and one for all” comes from Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. Shakespeare had it slightly differently, and for once, not quite as catchily, “one for all, or all for one.” Presidents have used it. Abe Lincoln, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Kennedy, “United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do.”
Variations are a staple of modern leadership axioms. “There’s no I in team.” Collaboration and teamwork are principles laid out in employee handbooks everywhere, from Verizon’s credo: “We know teamwork enables us to serve our customers better and faster,” to Allstate’s shared purpose, “Collective Success,” and “Collaboration: Being united helps us reach collective goals and brings out the best in each of us individually.”
Leaders lead change.
Change must come with a sense of urgency. The longer a transformation is in transition, the more likely it is to fail. So it’s essential leaders grasp two change stories: Story 1 and Story 2.
Story 2 is the destination. The vision. The 'where' and 'why' in "Where are we going and why?"
Story 1 is the journey. The path to get there. This is the 'how' and 'when' in "How do I do that, and by when?"
Both stories are equally important. Symbiotic.
Imagine you, as a consumer, have just bought a new widget for your home. And let's imagine that the widget has a service element to it. It could be a streaming box, or a doorbell cam, or a fitness tracker. The company that sold it to you has spent millions of dollars on product development, marketing, distribution... All to get that widget into your hands. That's change. It will revolutionize the way you watch TV, or answer your door, or the way you exercise.
But, you leave it in the box. The quick start guide is unread. The widget is never switched on. You paid a product fee but never activated the service.
This is a frustrating partial hit for the company that sold you the widget. When the cost of customer acquisition and the cost of goods sold are accounted for, you, as a customer, are a net loss.
The problem: you were sold on story 2— the destination; but story 1—the journey, never quite landed. This happens more often than you might think. Data isn’t readily available, but an educated guess might put up to ten percent of smart home devices left in the box. This unboxed widget isn’t just a product; in fact, this ‘servicification’ of products to create product-service systems is increasingly common.
Manufacturers work, therefore, on Story 1 and Story 2.
Compare Story 2 for two experiences: setting up cable TV a decade ago to activating a streaming box today. Before; a frustrating, time-consuming process, prone to user error. Today; a streamlined step-by-step and user-friendly experience.
Competition and commercial interest have led businesses to redesign today’s experience; where each missed activation costs money, designers have redesigned the service; where every customer call is expensive, engineers have leaned in; where every frustrated customer review damages the brand; managers have leaped into action.
In a recent Bain study, only 12% of organizations have undergone transformations where the business outcome has met or exceeded expectations. More often—in three out of four cases—the business settles for mediocre results—and then embarks on another large-scale change within two or three years.
Inevitably, leaders miss a central tenet of change—that people have to see themselves in the picture. This doesn’t happen, and there are a few reasons why.
In trying to set out the destination (Story 2), the vision is vague or unrealistic. There’s a lack of concreteness. The vision is more Motherhood and Apple Pie and less practical and actionable. Worse, the story is told in business lingo. Story 2 is dry and boring. High on jargon and acronyms; low on relevance and emotion. There’s no message discipline around Story 2, with mixed signals: on Monday, it’s all rah, rah, and strategy; by Friday, it’s back to business as usual.
Story 1, the journey, can miss the mark. When this happens, it’s the 1️⃣,2️⃣,3️⃣ that is missing. The roadmap is unclear, complex, or, worse, ambiguous. The steps are too big; too overwhelming. It ignores the personal challenges and obstacles that people feel—leaving them isolated and unsupported.
What we see most often: Story 2 is told without Story 1, or vice versa.
In the case where it’s all destination (Story 2), there is no movement. There is plenty of ‘why’ and ‘where’—it’s the ‘how’ and ‘when’ that is lacking. In the case where it’s all the journey (Story 1), there’s spin. It’s the classic, “Are we there yet?” A lot of activity, while old ways of doing things get jumbled in with the new, causing overload and burnout.
Story 2 is the answer to the question, “Where are we going, and why?” This appeals to the thinkers and visionaries in your organization, as well as the team players—those who are committed to doing the right thing.
Painting a rich and detailed picture of the destination—what it will look and feel like for individuals, teams, and the business—is essential. More essential still—is the reason. The rationale has to work at all levels, not just business ROI. Answer these questions:
You can detail out these questions using the Motive Triangle. This is a tool we use to understand the secret wish of your audience in business storytelling. It is the triangulation of hope, fear, and reason.
Hope moves you further. Fear moves you faster. Reason gives you a story to tell yourself—and others—about why you made the choice you made.
Story 1 is often misunderstood. It’s not that people haven’t bought into the change—perhaps they have. Story 2 is clear. But people are still doing what they did yesterday.
You are trying to build an army of advocates and change stalls for two reasons; either people are bought into the change, they just don’t know how to do it, or they are exercising a pocket veto, thinking, “This too shall pass.” Both are fixed through Story 1, the journey.
Where Story 2 was ‘where’ and ‘why’ Story 1 is ‘how’ and ‘when.’
Give people clarity on how to get there. This is the equivalent of quick-start guides and step-by-step how-to's.
Establish clear objectives and key results to track progress and keep everyone aligned. These goals are crucial. They have to be translated into the work: setting OKRs, testing OKRs, and running to OKRs.
Most importantly, to clear pocket vetoes, clear the busy work. Remove from people’s ‘todo’ list old work and old ways of working—get rid of anything that isn’t covered by OKRs
Make things concrete. The abstract goal of ‘getting fitter’ (story 2) is not going to have the same impact as a step-by-step plan of dietary changes and exercise routines. It’s as important to say what to do (do this) as it is to say what not to do (not that) when it comes to changing the way we work.
All of this is embedded through rituals. Rituals build habits, and habits build skills. Daily stand-ups build a habit of regular communication, collaboration, and accountability. This has a knock-on effect on skill: improving team coordination, problem-solving, and time management.
To get clearer on Story 1, ask yourself these questions.
Leaders must seamlessly weave Story 1 and Story 2 together.
Master message discipline. It is crucial in driving change. Story 1 should flow into Story 2, making the journey clear and the destination compelling. This requires consistent communication, reinforcing the narrative across all levels of the organization. Share stories of progress, celebrate small wins, and remind everyone of the ultimate goal.
By telling both stories effectively, leaders can inspire action, maintain momentum, and achieve lasting change.
Execution validates strategy.
That’s a Rose-ism—a piece of axiomatic lore that sounds right and is right. Strong execution of a bad strategy may feel good but won’t get you where you want to go. Flailing execution of a good strategy leads to finger-pointing, failure, and a return to the drawing board.
Whatever your job, it’s your job to execute.
The word comes from the Latin Exsequi—a fancy way of saying ‘to carry out.’ More Latin—Acta Non Verba; deeds, not words.
The least fancy way to say it—GSD. Get s*** done.
Exsequi is the root word for Executive. It’s the foundation of executive function—the part of our brain that handles carrying out tasks and making decisions. It’s the nub of executive presence—which returns us nicely to deeds, not words.
But what does all this Latin and wordsmithery mean, practically? It means:
For some, it’s in the job title—executive. But how do you get better at this Excsequi thing?
The biggest obstacle to GSD—the ‘D.’
When you’re looking down the barrel of an imminent product launch, about to go live with an event; you find dots left unconnected. D becomes delay, not done.
You walk through the project plan. The team reports in. “My part works.” Each team member has checked off their task. “I did my bit.” But it doesn’t all work. And it only works—whatever it is—when it all works.
Many of us share a bad habit in the pursuit of productivity: focusing on managing tasks rather than on outcomes. Outcomes are the north star; tasks are just steps along the path. In the endorphin rush of finishing something, we forget the end result is what counts. Activity doesn’t matter, and how hard everyone worked doesn’t matter.
As a leader, you have to prioritize strategic objectives over transactional work. We have to continually connect dots—deeply understand customer needs—focus on solutions, not problems. This is an outcome mindset. It means leading the team to work systemically rather than tick off problems.
If this is something you want to practice, try asking yourself this:
What are we trying to achieve that will always be true? E.g., Customers will always want...
Does this task move the ball forward? How does it connect to the outcome?
What is the biggest barrier we have to remove to get to this outcome?
We have to lift our heads up when we have the urge to put our heads down.
Speed matters.
Speed captures competitive advantage. Speedy responses equal happy customers. Speed closes deals. Speed is the secret sauce behind innovation. But it's easy to give in to inertia.
Top executives have a bias for action. They roll up their sleeves and act. They hold people to a higher standard. They continually build momentum. They know that a good decision now with imperfect information will beat a perfect decision later. What they seek to avoid—missed opportunities; competitors moving faster, and seizing advantage.
Deadlines matter.
The little ritual of small, measurable goals with clear deadlines. “So, Julie, this will be sent out end of day Tuesday?” It’s amazing how many meetings are held without these small details—assigning a single person with a specific date. More likely, there’s a laundry list, with groups of people attached to it and a vague “as soon as possible.” As soon as possible leaves too much wiggle room.
Keep the momentum going with regular updates, celebrating wins, and providing help and clarity. Remove obstacles that get in the way. Encourage quick decision-making over lengthy deliberation.
If this is something you want to practice, try asking yourself this:
What is the risk we run by running late? What can we proactively do now?
How do we maintain speed and quality?
Who will be responsible for each specific task, and what is the exact deadline?
Speed drives success.
Subtraction beats addition.
That’s difficult for anyone. Shedding, deducting, reducing—all go against human nature. Given a list of things, it’s easier to add one than take one away. Confronted with project priorities, we would like more capacity, not fewer projects.
We’re just not good at simplification.
Instead, we like science projects. Adding feels like a contribution. It feels more creative. The result? We add complication to complexity. But subtraction works. If you have a struggling performer on your team, give them less to do, not more to do. Have them focus on one thing. If you have a change initiative that isn’t getting through, simplify the message. If you have a looming project deadline and a sense of panic, figure out the next best step.
Singular, not plural.
Learn to say no. Prioritize ruthlessly. Make tough decisions. Streamline. Subtract to create focus and efficiency. Great executives create clarity out of chaos. They define clear strategies, communicate priorities effectively, and ensure cohesive execution. They interpret strategy into action and help teams find an effective rhythm. They use simple rules to translate strategy.
If this is something you want to practice, try asking yourself this:
Does this help us meet our goals (OKRs), yes or no?
What is the busywork we can shed?
How do I say this more simply?
Simplicity is the hallmark of mastery.
This, I believe, is the most common mistake leaders make.
It’s a trap I easily fall into. It’s invisible. I see it easily in other people, because there, it’s in your face. Leaders can either optimize the team around them or optimize the team.
The first one is easy. It feels more productive, more effective. But it isn’t.
Your work is done through people. Your job is to teach, to make their work easier, more productive, and effective. This is done by balancing TOUCH and TASK to suit the team and the situation. TOUCH is relationship—the trust, psychological safety, and security provided to show up as your best self at work. TASK is the work—the priorities, expectations, and objectives that drive growth.
When you optimize the team, you cede control and give agency and autonomy. You provide alignment and support—the right combination of connection and guidance to enable team members to learn, grow, and perform at their best.
If this is something you want to practice, try asking yourself this:
What are the core strengths of each team member? How do I help them improve?
How can I better value and recognize what good looks like for the team?
Are the current team structures and rituals best suited to achieve collective success?
Put your team first and push them to GSD.
To translate is to work on context more than control.
This works to outcomes; it optimizes the team. You create clear alignment and push autonomy down. Translation is more collaboration, more coaching, more teaching. You use questions and stories to create context. This is taking the time to explain the reasoning behind a decision, not just a decision.
To audit is to correct.
Feedback is valuable. The right answer is usually better. But feedback that isn’t taken is useless. An answer that isn’t accepted is a waste of time. Auditing is directive, top-down, command, and control. It’s focused on short-term fixes, not long-term growth and development.
There are times when correction—auditing, is necessary.
Looming or missed deadlines, time-sensitive projects that need swift and decisive action, critical safety or compliance issues, and consistent underperformance—all short-term problems. In the long term, audit mode undermines trust and the team's effectiveness.
If this is something you want to practice, try asking yourself this:
Share context: what is the secret wish of the intended audience/ user of this project?
Tell stories: how have you engaged with, learned from, made mistakes with this intended audience/ user?
What is the top-of-mind question we must answer? What is a difficult question that we might have to answer?
Translation fosters learning, innovation, and growth. It optimizes the team.
Be the constant.
Imagine business as a whirling, roaring river. Too much information flows around you. You can only dip your head in the stream and drink, but you can’t possibly drink it all. Undercurrents of competing priorities and shoals of shifting priorities grab at you. In that change and chaos, people are overwhelmed. They revert to something that will help them stay afloat.
They do what they did yesterday.
Change stalls, and work slows. Your job is to create pools of stillness, not eddies of chaos, and to help teams find an effective rhythm in work. Give people the opportunity to tune out distractions and tune into what truly matters.
Effective executives have a keen sense of what really drives success. They relentlessly raise standards around the vital few priorities, not the trivial many distractions. They balance short-term execution with long-term vision, and they guide teams to outcomes, not just busywork.
Communicate your vision and strategy at every level, at every turn. Prioritize ruthlessly. Run with simple rules. Create a roadmap of what lies ahead and establish rituals to create alignment and improvement.
If this is something you want to practice, try asking yourself this:
What narratives am I amplifying unintentionally? Can I get clearer?
How am I balancing speed and stability?
Where is my blindspot, where am I getting stuck?
Leading change is a clichéd marathon, not a sprint. The cliché doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
*** of course, the S*** stands for stuff. Did you think anything else?
If you aren’t into F1, watch Drive to Survive on Netflix. You will be.
If you are, you will know it's a high-octane chess game with engineers, strategists, and drivers working in a coordinated cacophony. All in pursuit of speed.
In an effort to go faster, mass is critical. F1 cars are aerodynamic sculptures of speed: grams shed by stripping paint; metal zippers replaced with fabric fasteners, heavy steel swapped for lightweight carbon fiber.
F1 is a festival of physics with a singular obsession: winning.
The teams that compete are small and agile; eighteen hundred people would be equivalent to a medium-sized business—a tenth of the staff of Workday or Intuit. Salaries—for some drivers and team principals—are up there with the CEOs of Netflix, Microsoft, and American Express.
Budgets and revenues are huge. Scuderia Ferrari, the most storied F1 team, pulls in $243 million per year in sponsorship. The cars are 300+ kph billboards; the teams' iconic brands worth billions of dollars and netting millions in operating profit each year.
So, how can teams whose #1 job is speed help your team go faster?
Six lessons, each engineered with winning in mind, can be drawn.
The weight loss that adds speed to a Formula 1 car is built from a clear constraint: every surplus ounce adds fractions of a second in lap time.
At work, we don’t see a direct tie between weight and speed, but it exists.
Every extra minute in a meeting, every meeting that could be an email, every wasted conversation adds delay. Delay leads to missed opportunities. Missed opportunities lead to missed revenue. But we’re more used to extending deadlines and pushing out dates than bringing them forward—why?
Because we do too much.
In companies large and small, the “to-do” list is long. More priorities compete for scarce resources, more pet projects, more legacy, more technical debt, and commitment debt that we owe—all extra weight. Every line item in a spreadsheet, every “extra” priority, every additional KPI—all slowing us down.
Get rid of busywork:
If it isn’t part of your strategy, why are you doing it? Get rid of it.
If it doesn’t filter through your OKRs, stop doing it.
Ruthlessly prioritize; aggressively stop doing.
It’s hard; you might do it once, feel good, and then slip. Put rigor in your regimen. Speak in threes. Simplify. Take weight from your slide deck. Use AI to clarify and shorten emails before you send them. Focus on fewer in a meeting rather than a laundry list.
When people and teams struggle to perform, take things off their plate. Cut meetings and cut meetings short. Start presentations with clear objectives. Put outcomes before problems. Glorify effectiveness over busyness.
Bring everything back to your objectives and key results—they are your formula for winning the race.
[Image: Headline: #GO FASTER by doing less. Image around this idea—If it isn’t part of your strategy, why are you doing it? Get rid of it., If it doesn’t filter through your OKRs, stop doing it. Ruthlessly prioritize; aggressively stop doing.]
There’s a story about Toto Wolff, the team principal of Mercedes-AMG Petronas. He was unhappy about the state of the bathrooms trackside in the Mercedes garage, so he hired a full-time “hygiene manager” who travels with the team. Wolff showed him how he wanted the toilet scrubbed, “how to wipe the floor, how to put the soap bottles with the front facing forward, how to sanitize the handles, and so on.”
I’ve heard a similar toilet story about Jack Plating, a former Chief Operating Officer at Verizon. To hear him tell it, he found an employee bathroom in a mess on a store visit, took off his jacket, and started scrubbing.
Both lavatorial stories point to higher standards: they send a message.
Frank Slootman was a teenage toilet cleaner. Now, he is the Chairman and CEO of Snowflake, with a track record of accelerating companies like Data Domain and ServiceNow. “Try applying insanely great as a standard and see how far you get.”
Higher standards are a pursuit of better.
Your standards must directly link to your mission, vision, and purpose—your strategy. Everything aligns with that—see rule #1: Do less (weight saving). Then, communicate, communicate, communicate.
Establish a rhythm of “doing” aligned with your strategy.
Rally the team around your objectives. Adopt a sense of urgency and intensity. Move fast, then move faster.
Simple rules are a way to manage complexity through simplicity.
Simple rules translate strategy; they are straightforward and memorable, help raise standards, and, most importantly, are applied at the point of need. At fassforward, we have some—“touch a client every day” and “don’t compromise on the deliverable.”
Simple rules play a dual role—steering people and strengthening culture.
First proposed by Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt in the book Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World, they come in different flavors:
Boundary rules clarify what is in and out; what is acceptable and unacceptable.
Prioritizing rules help with trade-offs and frame the allocation of resources.
Stopping rules tell you when to stop, avoiding the pursuit of sunk costs and white elephants.
How to rules are a simple ABC guide to stuff done.
Coordination rules synchronize and connect disconnected activities or efforts.
Timing rules tell you when to take an action or make a decision.
Formula 1 pitstops are a symphony of timing and coordination rules—necessary to arrange a crew of twelve around a car and driver: a front and rear jack operator, four tire carriers, four wheel gun operators, and someone holding a fire extinguisher. Pitstops are the sharp end of a synchrony of tire-swapping that wins or loses races. Done well, four sets of rubber are replaced in a remarkable 1.8 seconds.
Do you have simple rules to help you go faster?
How do you know what is and is not in bounds for your team? Can you rapidly allocate and prioritize resources? Do you have rules to help people stop doing? Those rules, and others, must be a translation of your strategy, spoken of repeatedly in simple, concrete terms, to shed weight and allow people to move with speed.
Unlike Formula 1, it’s not machines that you want to go faster; it’s people.
The goal of your team and a Formula 1 team is the same—to continuously improve. The mechanisms for improvement are the same: analysis, feedback, coaching, space, and practice.
Modern F1 cars are networked, connected intelligent machines with hundreds of sensors. Instrumentation provides terabytes of streamed data from car to crew. That data is feedback; pored over to eke out fractions of a second in lap time.
During the race, the drivers see and hear only a limited amount of that data—precisely what they need to know. Each car and driver has a race engineer who filters feedback, providing vital information to the driver when he needs it. The race engineer will let the driver know who is behind, who is in front, and who is closing on who. The driver signals clearly. “Shut up and let me drive,” or tenser variations during the race.
Off-track, the race for speed is more urgent. Engineers, designers, and drivers all seek tiny improvements. Drivers work on their reaction times and physical strength. Aerodynamicists fight a war with physics to lower drag and increase downforce.
As leaders in business, we must first improve ourselves. We have to provide hearable, useful feedback. We have to be able to coach and build capabilities and confidence in teams. We have to use data to cut through noise and provide clarity and direction for our people.
Most importantly, and echoing a driver’s request to “shut up and let me drive,”—we have to create pools of stillness instead of swirl. Space and time for our teams to focus, do their work, and improve themselves.
Data doesn’t make a decision. You do. The best in F1 know this.
Toto Wolff; “you need the right balance between data and gut feeling.”
For each race, the team, car, and driver go in with plans. You’ll hear it in the comms chatter between driver and engineer: "Tyres are dead, I think plan B,” or “Looks like plan A.” As a fan, you don’t know what plan A or B is—you just know the team had a run plan on when to pit and which tyres to use in which stint.
When the time comes, the decision to change tires comes from the race engineer—with feedback from the driver, input from race strategists and reams of data, and guidance from the team principal. The race engineer, not the driver, makes the call to “box, box, box”—the signal to pit.
In F1, what decisions to make and who makes them are clear.
In business, this is much more confused: requests for control disguised as requests for decision rights. Pocket vetoes pop up; hidden agendas appear, blinking in the cold light of day. A new strategy or plan is met with a mute, “this too shall pass.”
This swirl is fed by the hobgoblins’ other rules battle. A backlog of work—because you didn’t do less—allows favorite projects to be chosen and critical ones to stall. Standards aren’t clear, and in the fog, a well-meaning workforce clings to “how we’ve always done it.” There are no simple rules to prioritize resources or guide choices. Or—perhaps worst of all—the decision is clear: people want to do it but don’t know how. People are not getting better.
Decisions are better framed as what, not who.
Make the decision-making criteria—the context—clear and explicit. How does the decision align with the strategy? What were the options considered? Why was this path chosen?
Ask team members to verbalize their commitment and make clear the course of action, who has what task, and when it’s due.
Decision-making is a ritual.
Too many meetings have big “what” and “why” conversations. Great ideas are floated. Options are explored. Strategy and tactics align. And a decision is reached. But it stalls after that. Or it’s slow-walked among a dozen other priorities.
Why?
Because we didn’t do less. We have too many other options. We didn’t set—and agree—on higher standards. We don’t have simple rules to help us move quickly. For that, and a host of other sins, there is a cure—little rituals.
Drivers have pre-race routines, practicing reflex ball drills with their trainers. Crews repeatedly rehearse pit stops to improve speed and coordination. At Mercedes, the entire team comes together, and team photos are taken at victory celebrations—when a driver and car reach the podium. But there are no celebrations and no photographs for fourth place.
Little rituals are small, repeatable practices done in groups that improve collaboration and coordination. They build culture, strengthen mindset, and reinforce patterns of work.
In your team, it could be a daily or weekly stand-up; shout-outs that applaud others’ contributions; tech tips during staff calls. Meeting wrap-ups: action item reviews document what needs to be done, who is responsible, and when it is due. In our workshops, we have a little ritual of a two-word checkout—two words to describe participants’ experience at the end of the session.
The little rituals build habits. The habits build cohesion, and cohesion builds speed.
Not as fast as Formula 1, but faster.
The average person knows about 30,000 words.
I dare say you know about 40,000. Arrange those words in a row from concrete to abstract. The practical, you-can-easily-describe-it words are on the left. That’s about 14,000 straightforward words, starting with “cat,” “sat,” and “mat.” The words you hope to get in a game of charades.
On the right are the game-losing words.
These words are sophisticated. An abstract, theoretical, inaccessible group. Roughly 26,000 of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it-words, like “zeitgeist,” “qualia,” and “existentialism.”
Trust sits at number 26,262 in this thought experiment.
It’s squarely in the middle of the abstract words, about two-thirds of the way along the concrete-abstract spectrum. Yet it’s a very popular word, easily outperforming “cat” and “zeitgeist.”
Trust is a word we use a lot but don’t really grasp.
Perhaps some principles might help? Here are six.
Trust is a feeling.
We trust, you trust, I trust. And “I” am the only one I am sure about. We remember (psychologists call it encode) information better when it’s about us—when we have a personal stake. This is the self-reference effect. This is about your experience. How you feel. Take the directions to a restaurant. No matter how good you are with navigation, you remember the directions better if you have been there. If someone explained them to you, not so much.
So it goes with trust. We have a personal stake.
In the saying, there’s no "I" in team; in reality, there is. It’s “I trust.” Trust in teams is a collection of “I’s.” Same with culture. Same with organizations, the root is “I.” Our own unique, individual biases, foibles, and personal judgments directly impact how I trust.
I trust.
You may have a trusty steed or a trusty sword. More likely a trusty sidekick.
When I trust, it’s a relationship between you and something else: a trusted source, a trusted brand, a trusted service. We use the word trusty when we have a personal relationship and affection for something dependable and reliable. We go with trusted when there’s a more professional sense of reliability, reputation, and quality.
But what about I trust you? I trust another person or group.
That’s the face-to-face, ego-to-ego, “I” to “I” relationship—the one that powers teams through cooperation, information sharing, problem-solving, and productivity. Built from shared moments over time, social bonds and community.
I trust you.
What do I trust you with? I trust you to do something.
Complete a project, follow up on a call, fix a problem, launch a new feature; the list of do’s at work is endless. Trusting others to do is what makes teams work.
When trust is not operative, bad things happen.
Micromanagement: the excessive oversight that kills morale and hamstrings innovation. Information hoarding: I don’t trust what you will do with a particular piece of information, so I don’t share. Over time, this lack of operative trust turns bureaucratic. Ingrained in the system, along with risk aversion, silos of information, and learned helplessness.
When trust is operative, the situation reverses.
Micromanagement gives way to autonomy. Information hoarding turns into information sharing. People take risks and offer forgiveness. Silos break down, and discretionary effort increases.
I trust you to do...
If I trust you to do something, that something better be a shared goal.
That shared goal may be a purpose that creates a sense of belonging and shared identity. A shared why unites a team. A strategic narrative clarifies expectations, scope, and role. It reduces uncertainty and increases trust. People can see themselves in the picture.
Shared outcomes are what we aim to achieve together. They provide more clarity and a shared ambition. It grounds what you are doing and what I am doing in a tangible way. Knowing you are shooting for the same goal can help me back off an approach I might question or a concern I might have.
Common goals, set as OKRs for the team and well run, build trust on the team. Shared Objectives and Key Results create a platform for open communication, fostering trust. Regular, transparent progress check-ins on OKRs create an opportunity for learning.
[We’re on the same page, so] I trust you to do...
[We’re on the same page, so] I trust you to do something.
And then something happened, and I didn’t like it. We were fine at the “Why” and the “What” stage, but I didn’t love your “When” and “How.” My micro-managey tendencies come out. To misquote Mike Tyson,
“Everybody trusts until they get punched in the mouth.”
When your eyes are watering and ears ringing, trust is tested. This may be the most crucial principle of trust. You’re near to crossing the line. When you want to give feedback, get into a colleague's area, or tread on their expertise, there's a keep off the grass sign.
Your natural instinct is to hold back. Don’t go there.
But you must. It’s better for the business. It will avert a problem. It will, in the long run, help your colleague. You have two options.
Whether the feedback is digested is all in the framing.
[We’re on the same page, so] I trust you to do... [but here’s some feedback.]
How much I trust you, and to do what, will change over time.
We call change over time: experience. My experience with you changes my perception of you as someone I do, or don’t, trust. Much of that change has more to do with me—my life experiences and personal growth—than it has to do with you.
But you can influence that change.
Trust, by nature, is skewed. When trust is self-referential (I trust) and trust is a relationship (I trust you), there is an inequality of information. I will always know more about myself than I will about you. This is where signaling comes in: giving hard-to-fake cues about yourself that others can pick up on.
Those cues come in the form of Consistency, Clarity, Capability, Credibility, Candor, and Care—the six C’s of trust.
Consistent behavior over time fosters trust. People are more likely to trust someone who acts predictably and reliably than someone whose actions are erratic or inconsistent. (Lewicki, McAllister, & Bies, 1998)
Clear and transparent communication builds trust by reducing ambiguity and uncertainty. People appreciate being kept informed and understanding the reasoning behind decisions. (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995)
Demonstrating competence and expertise fosters trust, as people are more likely to rely on those they believe are capable of delivering on their promises. (Colquitt, Scott, & LePine, 2007)
A reputation for honesty and integrity is crucial for building trust. People are more likely to trust someone they perceive as truthful and ethical. (Krackhardt & Bhattacharya, 1999)
Being open and honest, even when admitting mistakes, can strengthen trust. People appreciate authenticity and vulnerability. (DeConinck & Schmidt, 2012)
Demonstrating concern and empathy for others builds trust by promoting a sense of shared values and mutual respect. (Mishra & Mishra, 1993)
Signaling, through word and deed, can change others’ perceptions of you. It takes trust from the abstract to the concrete. Those trust-building conversations and trust-building actions have given others evidence to bolster what they feel.
I trust [we will get better.]
You have three children. The twins, who are pre-teens, and a younger one. You buy them a toy to play with.
You have two options: Toy A or Toy B.
For those who bought Toy A—congratulations. It’s a hit. The twins take to it. They take turns using it. They bring their younger sib into the game. It’s soon the younger ones' number one toy. You buy two more so that each can play on their own. When their friends come over, all the kids play with Toy A. It’s the talk of the neighborhood.
Other parents call and ask you where you got Toy A.
If you bought Toy B, you had good reason. It was cheaper, and it was immediately available. You bought it from a big, reputable toy retailer. The retailer mostly sold you on the Toy’s parental controls. You could set the maximum play time, even the frequency and intensity of play. But it was a miss. The twins played with it once but had better things to do. The younger one played with it occasionally, mostly when they were bored, and you reminded them about the Toy.
In the back of the cupboard, gathering dust, lies Toy B.
Toy A was a Rubik’s cube.
Toy B was a BeatBo.
If you haven’t heard of a BeatBo, that tells you everything.
In this wildly made-up story, the twins went on to big business. One is the VP of product-something. The other a VP of corporate-something. The younger one is an entrepreneur.
But, the parents in the story are more interesting. The parents who bought Toy A have a product mindset. The parents who bought Toy B have a bureaucratic mindset.
Why are some products successful and others not so much? It comes down to the decisions—big and small—on the way to building that product. The culture that informs those decisions. It comes down to the difference between a product mindset and a bureaucratic one. It comes down, in the end, to product leadership.
Product leadership requires a product mindset. When you talk to product leaders, people who have the scars and experience of building things and bringing them to market, you see, over and over again, six rules that they hold dear:
Aka. pay attention to the world around you. Product people are idea magpies. They take in and connect, think systemically, and look for inspiration in all sorts of ways, from looking at how customers behave to new technologies. It's the innovation that comes from the collision of ideas.
Behaving this way encourages openness to inspiration from a variety of sources and staying attuned to external changes. This rule advocates for continuous innovation and adaptation based on trends, user behavior, and market dynamics, fostering a culture of learning and flexibility.
If this is something you want to practice, try asking yourself this:
A warning comes with this rule. While it’s good to feel as though “it can always be improved,” it’s bad to get to a point where “it’s never done.”
Products have deadlines to hit and markets to meet. See rule #6.
Everything has constraints. They are the engine of creativity.
Humankind’s greatest achievements had constraints. Constraints give us focus and direction. A firm foundation to push off. The Pyramids were built with limited technology and limited resources. What wasn’t a constraint? Time and labor.
Constraints free creativity. The limitations are pathways to invention. The movie Apollo 13 dramatizes this ingenuity. When an oxygen tank exploded, the Command Module (CM) was crippled. Three astronauts sheltered in the Lunar Module (LM) for the remainder of the trip; a vehicle designed for two astronauts and seventy-five hours of operation.
The engineers at NASA had to—literally—put a square peg in a round whole. The great grandaddy of constraints.
Their solution, using the materials on board, plastic bags, duct tape and other scavenged parts, was built through understanding constraints.
If this is something you want to practice, try asking yourself this:
A warning comes with this rule. Functional fixedness. This is the cognitive bias where we assume constraints even when none exist. We have a hammer, so everything is a nail.
We must push against constraints to fully understand them.
In this rule, water flows downhill.
That doesn’t mean you can’t get water to flow uphill—you can—it just takes a lot more work and energy. It's much easier, for instance, to put in a CRM system built around a user's email because they have built-in email habits. It’s much more difficult to get people to log in to a second system.
You may spend 100% of your time and energy thinking about your product. I can guarantee your users won’t. If water doesn’t flow downhill—if your product doesn’t slot into their routine, if it isn’t a straightforward fit or an easy habit to build, you will struggle.
Adoption will lag. Usage will drop. Excitement will wane.
Venmo and Uber snuck into the smartphone ecosystem and made things easier. More convenient payments, more convenient rides. VR, despite the hype, struggles because we don’t wear bulky headsets as part of our everyday wardrobe.
Think frictionless. Don’t make me think. Intuition over instruction.
If this is something you want to practice, try asking yourself this:
Warning: Fitting into existing routines doesn't guarantee long-term success. Think TiVo. The black box checked a lot of boxes. A mashup of VCR and hard drive; dressed in a sleek design and user-friendly interface, it commercial-skipped its way through your favorite shows on hundreds of cable channels. It fit perfectly into household viewing habits. Except it missed streaming, cord-cutting, and binge-watching—the once pioneering product is a niche afterthought today.
If it looks difficult to use, people will shy away from using it. And vice-versa, if it looks inviting, comfortable, or tempting to try, people will.
Take a Smeg refrigerator. Beautiful. Retro. Colorful. Charming. But also pricey, energy-inefficient, and noisy. Yet they’re incredibly successful, with glowing product reviews, a celebrity following, and brand recognition.
Contrast that with the Pontiac Aztec: a bug-like front end, endless amounts of plastic, and boxy proportions. Ugly. Yet it was a versatile, spacious, all-wheel-drive loaded with standard features. But still—a flop.
Humans use products—and you want them to. But we’re capricious. We like things to look a certain way, to feel a certain way. Perception and first impressions are a powerful tandem.
If this is something you want to practice, try asking yourself this:
Here’s the warning: Concorde, Delorean, Fisker Karma, Yeezy Foam, Palm Pre. Beauty is only skin deep. Everything else has to work.
This isn't Etsy.
Hand-crafted, difficult to maintain, and difficult to scale don't make profitable products. Patterns are reusable design elements, code component, or business processes that simplify development, maintenance, and growth.
They’re everywhere.
A design pattern might be the reusable elements like buttons and menus that create a familiar and intuitive user interface. They’re part of the design language that makes your product look like your product. In a luxury car, the shape of a front grille, headlights, the overall proportions, and body creases: all to distinguish a BMW from an Audi without ever seeing the badge.
Code patterns are pre-written snippets of code or modules. They save developers time. The single sign-on through your Apple or Google ID, the shopping cart functionality that tracks items you select and updates prices, or the social media-like functions. All pre-written centrally and used over and over.
Business process patterns: repeatable workflows that onboard new employees, or new customers, service processes that handle customer inquiries and complaints. The patterns are codified as process and practice to allow smooth experiences and focused work.
Build patterns into your product. They offer scale: foundational components that can adapt and grow as your product expands. They offer fit; for a consumer, patterns are “the way things work.” The affordability of a button that looks like you can press it or a menu item where you might expect it to be—making products easier to learn and navigate. They save time (and resources); developers don’t need to invent everything from scratch, established workflows streamline production.
If this is something you want to practice, try asking yourself this:
Patterns have a downside. Taking a cookie-cutter approach to product stifles creativity and reduces innovation. It makes your differentiator the same as everyone else’s. Mindless use of patterns can increase complexity, ignore context, and reduce agility.
Says it all really. No one cares about your theory.
What validates a product’s success is not that it’s finished. Or that the development came in on time and under budget—although if it did, congratulations. Success is confirmed by every sale, verified by every install, and backed by consumption and use.
This is where the real work of product leadership begins.
Measurement matters. Product leaders become product champions, driving adoption and usage. Crafting compelling product stories. Developing go-to-market strategies and building strong customer relationships. Building a feedback loop to improve the product in its next cycle.
The real test of a product lies in the hands of the users.
If this is something you want to practice, try asking yourself this:
To this, there is no downside.
Visualizing data in this manner is a surefire way to lose your audience. You're asking them to decipher information and find insights for themselves.
Now imagine if we applied data visualization principles to the above data. The below chart is an excellent example of how to make data easily digestible. I'll explain why...
Beyond clarity: A compelling headline hints at the value the reader will gain. (Example: "The 3-Word Headline That Makes Data Irresistible")
Test options: Come up with 3 to 4 headline variations to see which feels strongest.
Remove extra steps: Direct labeling is when a label is placed next to a data point. It saves viewers the burden of referencing a separate legend, improving understanding.
When legends are needed: Keep them simple and position them close to the corresponding visual elements.
Decluttering: Removing redundant symbols allows more space for the important elements – the data itself.
Consistency is key: Use consistent highlighting to create a visual pattern the audience learns to recognize quickly.
Accessible colors: Blue and orange is a common color combination that's friendly for people who are color blind.
Arrow alternatives: The start of the arrow is 2013 and the end of the arrow is 2022. For smaller changes, a '+' or '-' sign can also indicate direction.
Trustworthiness: Always cite the data source! This builds trust, adds credibility, and allows viewers to investigate further if desired.
Formatting matters: The source should be visible but not distract from the main visualization.
Benchmarks matter: Contextual data anchors the viewer's understanding. Other benchmarks could include averages, historical trends, and/or targets.
Purposeful sorting: Data can be sorted by magnitude, alphabetically, or another logical pattern depending on the story you're telling.
Ranking is optional: Rankings can be useful, but consider if highlighting the top/bottom few items would be more impactful.
Descriptive and concise: Labels should accurately guide the viewer without being wordy.
Consider hierarchy: If one category is the primary focus, make that label slightly more prominent (size or boldness).
Data visualization isn't just about making things pretty. It's about unlocking the insights that drive better decisions.
Effective data storytelling goes beyond individual slides or presentations. In business, it empowers us to cut through complexity, align teams around a shared understanding of the numbers, and make faster, more informed decisions. Whether you're analyzing sales performance, customer trends, or operational metrics, clear visualization is the key to unlocking the insights that truly drive success.
Now, I challenge you to find the stories waiting to be told using your data! Try applying any of the above best practices to your work. Share your before-and-after transformations in the comments below – let's learn and improve together!
For the original chart and analysis, see @ashleywu's article, "The Nation’s Top-Performing Public School System" published in The New York Times. (Oct. 10, 2023).
2012. Glitch shut up shop.
2021. Slack sold to Salesforce for $27.7 billion.
What happened in between was an object lesson in product storytelling.
Glitch was a whimsical online game that never caught on. As the game stalled, the developers at Tiny Speck pivoted.
The team, under Stewart Butterfield, went into stealth mode with a new focus—communications software. Venture Capitalists bought in.
From the ashes of Glitch, Slack emerged.
Slack was the “Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge,” an easier, centralized way to collaborate and communicate. At launch in 2013, Slack and Butterfield had a villain squarely in their sights—email glut.
A successful beta ran for six months, with Slack gathering user tweets into a wall of love:
“It's officially the best tool for team communication I've ever used. Period.”
“I should be working. I am NERDING out about Slack.”
“Pro tip: @slackhq is like @yammer and @skype without the bad parts.”
In Months, Slack broke through as “Team messaging that works.” Soon, Slack had five million users. Among them: NASA. Slack was “A messaging app for teams who put robots on Mars.”
Slack kept growing.
In 2019, it traded publicly. Its NYSE ticker symbol—WORK. The company proclaimed, “Whatever work you do, you can do it in Slack.”
In July 2021, Salesforce acquired Slack for $27.7 billion.
And a valuable one.
Product stories are born in people's heads. They pop up in garages, showers, and on long walks. The product story takes root before writing the first line of code or building the first prototype.
Product stories are, by necessity, a science fiction.
They are stories of a future world—better than today. The buyer is the protagonist. The hero of the story. The product is a magic bean, a device that propels the hero forward and gives them special powers.
The product story breaks conventional thinking and spurs innovation.
When product stories work, products sell. So, if you’re an entrepreneur, or an intrapreneur; a marketer, or an engineer, if you’re building anything, you want to crack this particular code.
Here are six rules of product storytelling.
Modern product development starts with jobs to be done, wicked problems, use cases, or user stories. Each is an offshoot of the other, starting with Ted Levitt’s insight that, when hanging a painting, "People don't want a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” That kernel of truth points to customers' desire for outcomes, not the product itself.
Taken together or individually, jobs to be done, wicked problems, and its ilk are not product stories.
They are the data in the story, lacking emotion.
To tell the product story is to understand the psychology of the buyer. It’s to understand that people don’t buy products; they buy better versions of themselves.
Products are filled with transformative potential. Narrative translates that.
Slack tapped into this ethos.
"Who Do We Want Our Customers to Become?... We want them to become relaxed, productive workers who have the confidence that comes from knowing that any bit of information which might be valuable to them is only a search away. ...We want them to become masters of their own information [not] overwhelmed by the neverending flow."
This was from a memo—We don’t sell saddles here—penned by Stewart Butterfield to the team at Tiny Speck— weeks prior to launch.
We like our comfort food. Our go-to traditions. Our favorite playlists.
Human nature prescribes predictability. Habits and routines save us time. We don’t have to think too hard. The tried and true give us a dopamine hit. The familiar gives us comfort, safety, and belonging. That doesn’t mean humans don’t try new things. We do.
But product builders overestimate our fascination with the new and underestimate the bundle of biases that make us back off.
Therefore, in product storytelling, we must use old words to describe new things. We see this rule in action over and over again. Product storytellers have to bridge the gap between the familiar and the unfamiliar.
What we now call a car was first called a “horseless carriage”—a name with a descriptor and comparator. In the pre-dawn of the internet, it went by the moniker “information superhighway.”
In a never-look-back-moment in 1979, a little company called Taylor Made introduced an innovation to golf. When Lee Trevino won the 1984 PGA championship with Taylor Made’s “metal wood,” a whole generation of golfers rushed to trade in their persimmon drivers for metal ones.
The name carries power.
Old words compare and describe new things. The Comparator and Descriptor work in tandem like a horseless carriage. The order doesn’t matter. It’s a descriptor (metal) and comparator (wood) plus the promise of a better version of yourself (I will be a better golfer).
That’s the title of the product story.
If the name has power, it doesn’t have to be the name alone.
Analogies help—the verbal art of making the unfamiliar familiar. They could be abstract: Steve Jobs introducing the computer as “a bicycle for the mind” or an iPod as “1000 songs in your pocket.” Or, more concrete, the apocryphal story of Bill Gates's internal product demo to Windows investors by showing them a Mac.
You are using old words to describe new things to create vivid, relatable scenarios that highlight the product's benefits in everyday terms.
Slack used its early adopters masterfully. More from Slack’s wall of love:
“Heard someone at work say that @slackhq was just another chat client. I slapped them. Hard.”
There are always three versions of a product story.
The consumers of each version have different wants and needs. They buy into the story at different times, but the story is the same. Think of this as the book, the movie, and the video game.
The three unique audiences: Backers, builders, and buyers.
The backers: They’re investors in the story. They’re more likely to buy into the concept and the team because when they’re read in, the story is a few slides long or some sketches on a whiteboard.
The backers believe in the idea and the capability of the team.
The builders: This is a crucial audience. They’re turning vision into reality. Designers, creators, coders, engineers—whoever is on the team—will make thousands of decisions as the product goes from whiteboard to bench to production.
The builders make a product that lives up to the story or make it a lie.
The buyers: These are your customers and users. Depending on what you’re selling, there are people who write the check and people who use the thing. That could be the CIO whose budget pays for security software, the CISO who insists on it, or the developer who uses it. There’s usually more than one buyer in the loop, even for something as simple as candy: the kid who points to it at checkout and the parent who pays for it.
The buyers are the heroes of the product story, even as an ensemble.
The trick is to adjust the narrative to address each unique perspective. For backers, the story might focus on potential and return on investment; for builders, on innovation and challenge; and for buyers, on the product's practical and emotional benefits. This is message discipline at its finest.
Stewart Butterfield hinted at his pitch to Slack’s backers in 2013.
"We want to do what Gmail did for e-mail. All your communications just goes into one big place, and you don't worry about it."
His “Saddles” memo adjusted the story for builders.
“We get 0 points for just getting a feature out the door if it is not actually contributing to making the experience better for users or helping them to understand Slack."
Product storytelling is like Aesop’s fable.
The tortoise is concrete and tangible. The hare is abstract and hyperbolic. It’s tempting to bet on the hare, but the tortoise wins every time. Human nature strikes again.
Our brain prefers demonstration to declaration.
Showing a product in action reduces uncertainty. Seeing, hearing, or touching something creates a visceral understanding. Stories activate mirror neurons. The reflected experience of others primes our personal narrative. The product story borrows credibility from testimonials and user accounts.
The demo is everything.
At product launches, they surprise and delight. Think of Boston Dynamics' inventive videos of robots breakdancing, performing parkour, or backflips. None of the reasons you might actually buy a robot, but impressive nonetheless.
Putting the product in people’s hands is powerful juju.
The demonstration is visual and visceral; concrete evidence makes benefits tangible and believable. For the buyer, it becomes sunk cost. This is the motor of the freemium business model— use creates a personal and persuasive narrative driving purchase.
Mark Roberge, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, has turned the demo into a science. For him, it’s a leading indicator of product-market fit.
In Slack’s case, sending 2,000+ team messages in the first 30 days was an objective, data-driven “aha” moment where products stick.
A product story isn’t static. It evolves from hope to fear.
At no stage are you done. The story changes in response to new insights, market changes, and user feedback. Flexibility allows the narrative to remain relevant and engaging.
The technology adoption lifecycle changes the product story. In the early stages, innovators are buying in. A tiny population taking a risk on new inventions. It’s the rush of the “new.” Half the appeal is life on the bleeding edge.
The early adopters are fractionally more cautious. They will take risks if the benefits are there, buying into early results and case studies and looking for practical solutions to specific problems.
The product story crosses the chasm to the early majority.
Another shift in the story. To get to that group, the story has to amp up social proof and track record. The story is no longer about avant-garde; it’s about value. The product story quells fears of incompatibility, reliability gaps, complexity, or potential obsolescence.
The story shifts again in the next phase.
Here, it’s FOMO. The fear of falling behind. A product story for the late majority asks, “Why aren’t you...?” instead of “Why don’t you...? The story highlights elements of essential and proven. It’s a story for market leaders and mainstream adoption.
The laggards are the natural skeptics.
Any product story will have a countervailing one. The one laggards are more likely to believe. You have heard them: windmills cause cancer, or vaccines are tracking you. And laggards are not easily persuaded.
For Slack, every “one hour in, and I’m ready to burn every email server into the ground” has a story that swings in the opposite direction. “We already have email, I have messages, I have texts. I don’t need another way for people to get hold of me.”
This last rule of product storytelling connects them to brand storytelling.
The simple version is that the product story has to be “on brand.” That doesn’t mean an unquestioning dedication to selected fonts and colors. It means the product story has to fit. It has to be believable. A nuanced understanding is that the product fits into a broader world.
This is true in the real and in the imagination.
Months of work and obsession by the builder translate into fleeting attention from the buyer. In the real, the product fits within the buyer’s broader context. Their environment, their community, their workflow, their day.
In the imagination, it’s the world-building. The product itself is a doorway to a world that the buyer wants to be part of. The in-crowd. World-building, the arena of sci-fi and fantasy nerds everywhere, plays a role. This is the magic system that powers your product. The rules of what you would and wouldn’t expect.
Tiny Speck started with the idea of creating an online civilization, the world of Glitch. The craft of world-building was brought into the product and the product story. Custom emoji reactions let users infuse playfulness and personality. Shared channels created member-only spaces to reinforce bonds, inclusion, and identity.
Butterfield knew this: "We are unlikely to be able to sell “a group chat system” very well: there are just not enough people shopping for group chat system...That’s why what we’re selling is organizational transformation."
This is the better future—the science fiction of the product story.
What is your product story?
You have built your OKRs. You have tested them. Now it’s time to run them.
If you get this right, you have a system to manage work. Better yet, that work executes the strategy. It’s aligned. You have a rugged scaffolding for team performance. Your people have autonomy and clarity.
Your job gets easier.
Here are six routines to run your OKRs smoothly.
If your OKRs pass the 90% test, you know with certainty that they will cover 90% of the team’s work and be strategically aligned with higher goals. This gives you an opportunity—to get rid of busywork.
Any team will have three types of work.
Core work—the work at the heart of the job. This is the building, selling, and running that helps the business succeed today. Think of it as the work that keeps the money rolling into the business or keeps the lights on—it’s what you’re paid for.
Critical work—the work that ensures the future. This is the planning, improving, and innovating that positions the business to succeed tomorrow. This is the work that makes what you do current, relevant, and efficient—it’s the persistent change that is management.
Busy work—the work that gums up the gears of business. It’s the quarterly report you were once asked to produce, and now, no one reads. The old system that no one has asked you to switch off. This is the inertia in the business. The work that people cling to, not because it’s important, but because we’ve always done it this way.
You will never completely get rid of busy work, but you want to squeeze it out of the week as much as possible. Your first order of business, once you have your OKRs: Create a “don’t do” list. The work or projects you can put on hold or simply stop because they are not core or critical.
OKRs inform your work.
That applies daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly.
Daily—everyone on the team is working against OKRs. The tasks, projects, emails, and meetings are all moving the ball forward. The OKRs set the playing field. They are a filter. If the work makes progress against the OKRs, good, keep doing that work. If it’s not, stop. It’s likely not a high priority and not worth the time and effort.
Thought for the day: “Is this [the work I am doing] progressing my OKRs?”
Weekly—regular check-in or stand-up. These are focused on the work. The team collectively looks at some kind of scorecard or dashboard tracking work against OKRs. These check-ins keep everyone focused and allow for real-time adjustments if you’re veering off track.
Ask: How are we doing? What help do you need? What are we moving forward this week?
Monthly—(or as needed) set and reset the work against the OKRs. Close out completed assignments. Conduct retrospectives. Assign new projects; spin up new workstreams—all to progress work against OKRs.
Celebrate progress: This is your operational rhythm. You do something, declare victory, and move on. Your efforts are moving you closer to your OKRs. What’s next up? Do we have too much on the plate that’s slowing us down? This is a time to adjust.
Quarterly—(or sooner, if needed) revisit your OKRs and refresh. Business isn’t static, and neither are your OKRs. This is a strategic conversation. The job is the same as when you set and tested your OKRs. Making sure they are concrete and clear enough for people to work with and aligned and relevant to the strategy.
Meet with your team: Ideally, run this as a live, in-person session. Encourage frank and free-ranging conversation. Adjust your OKRs as needed. This is the critical work that improves how your team executes.
OKRs work because they are objective. Ironically, that’s the KR piece.
Using OKRs moves work along in a strategic direction, and you know you are making progress. Thank you, data. Except. The “Except” is the downfall of data; it’s easy to fall into the habit of measuring everything. As you do, the act of measuring slows progress and causes spin. You soon move from Key Results (KRs) to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to a Whole Lot of Performance Indicators (WLPI). Not good.
Quick story. We once worked with a company that was swimming in data. They believed in it. They measured everything. They split markets into regions and had twenty regional vice presidents. Each RVP was competitive and transparent with data. That was how they drove execution. The problem was that they had so many KPIs; every vice president was #1 in something. Not good.
Use data. Be transparent. But don’t measure for measurement’s sake.
Have a system or tool where everyone can see progress against OKRs. That visibility maintains accountability and shared ownership. Everyone is aware of how their actions impact the team’s Objectives.
But it’s better when transparency is coated with understanding.
Try tier-listing your data. If you don’t know, tier-listing is a ranked classification system originally used by gamers. Tier lists are all over the internet, rating everything from Formula 1 to medieval helmets.
In the not-quite-as-interesting but definitely useful category, build a tier list for your data.
S-tier: (S for superb) These are the measures that drive the business. The ones Wall St. cares about. Revenue, Profit Margin, Market Share.
A-tier: These are the direct measures for your OKRs. The primary KPIs in your key results. In a product organization, these might be market share by product, adoption rate, or customer feedback score on new features.
B-tier: These are the KPIs that move the needle of the A-tier. In that same product organization, they might provide insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of the product development process, time to market for new features, bug fix time, and percentage of roadmap complete.
C-tier: These KPIs are proxy measures. They are easy to measure, sometimes useful, and rarely indicative of a business outcome. In that same product organization, proxy measures might be feature deployment frequency (indicates the team is working hard, but not that the work is driving business outcomes) or uptime/ stability metrics (important, but only tells us if the product is working, not if people buy it or are using it).
D-tier: These are KPIs that don’t tie or correlate to business outcomes. You can measure them and maybe do, but they’re rarely useful. For example, hours worked per week, number of meetings held, lines of code written, all measure activity, not progress.
When the team understands the value of each measure, you can separate the signal from the noise.
You might have heard the term “patterns of play.”
You see it in football (both types, the world version and the American one). The pattern is a set of repeating tactics. They’re codified. Everyone on the team understands their role. Routines and decisions boil down a complex strategy. The play is an effective amalgam of the teams’ strengths to produce results.
All sports have them. They name them. Tiki Taka (football), Ground and Pound (American football), Triangle Offense (basketball), Small Ball (baseball), Bomb and Gouge (golf). Patterns of play create a common language for players, coaches, and fans. Everyone involved has a sense of shared ownership. Every player understands their role in achieving the team's goals. Everyone knows what good looks like.
So it goes with patterns of work.
The pattern of work is effectively “what good looks like” for business. If your OKRs define the win, the pattern of work is how you win. Repeating the pattern is a path to speed and scale. The pattern is deliberate and simple.
You might create a pattern of work through a product launch process or checklist. The patterns operationalize and sequence tasks. Everyone knows the “how.” They have shared ownership and a common language. A pattern might be how you take in customer input or produce a particular report. It might be ritualized—customer advisory panels, idea funnels, or performance reviews.
As important as establishing that pattern is coaching to it—everyone understands their role and brings their particular skills to the table.
As a leader, your job is to hold your team accountable to their OKRs.
But it doesn’t end there. Much of your time will be spent teaching, focused on two goals: the OKRs of the team (the “what” and the “when”) and upgrading the skills and capabilities of the team. This is where you teach to learn.
A missed Key Result is a learning opportunity. So is one you hit.
That starts with a growth mindset. You hear this in different ways: there’s always a higher gear, what got you here won't get you there, raise the bar. A growth mindset is the change in change management. The idea that we can get better and the optimism to believe it.
As you run the team to OKRs, praise effort and process, not just outcomes. Encourage taking risks and experimenting, but only if you’re comfortable learning from setbacks without blame. Encourage team members to continually work on “one thing;” their own personal growth opportunity.
Use patterns. Turn a growth mindset into a ritual. A retrospective focused on collective learning. Or a “why it’s good” session, where you tear down a piece of work, not to find out why it didn’t work, but what worked well.
Teach. Obsess about demystifying and simplifying. Explain. Break things down into simple steps. Tell stories. Use analogies. Encourage curiosity.
When you give feedback, make it about the team. The focus is collective success, not personal failure. Don’t cover harsh feedback in a s**** sandwich. Make the feedback about what the team needs from you; how you can help, not what you did wrong or what you can improve.
This routine could have been “celebrate completed OKRs,” but it’s not.
OKRs done right execute strategy. They offer clarity. The team is aligned and engaged. People feel autonomy and purpose. That is the outcome you celebrate. The journey, as much as the destination.
You’re looking to balance data—objective results; with feeling—trust, engagement, and personal growth. Every milestone met shows you have done something. You declare victory and move on. That’s an opportunity to highlight the team’s great work and note exceptional individual contributions.
Pick out the hard, soft stuff.
Not just getting a project over the finish line but the way the team collaborated, where they challenged each other, where people took bold stances or exceeded expectations.
Paint a picture. Remind everyone of the journey and make time for storytelling and symbolism—the challenges overcome and the impact on customers or the business.
You have your OKRs. But are they any good?
If OKRs are to do their job—translate strategy, guide execution, and allow teams to work productively—then it’s not a question of filling out a form or checking the “yes, I have done my OKRs” box.
You must test them.
Six tests can take your OKRs from “meh” to “marvelous.” The Goldilocks test, the Hallway test, the 90% test, the “good year” test, the Autonomy test, and the Fettling test.
If you have written your Objectives well, you have three of them.
But are they the right three? To understand that, ask the Wright brothers. When Orville and Wilbur were solving powered flight, they could have broken down the problem into three objectives:
This might seem reasonable to someone who knows nothing about aeronautics or engineering. But it wouldn’t have gotten them very far. Instead, they broke the problem down into three objectives.
This was the Wright approach. It took their experience and applied it to three distinct but relevant objectives. Going after lift, power, and control instead of up, along, and down.
That, in essence, is the Goldilocks test: Make sure your objectives are not too hot (or soft), not too cold (or hard), but just right.
This may seem anachronous in an age of distributed work.
We don’t walk down hallways together much anymore. But imagine if you did. Imagine if you have someone new on your team. You explain your OKRs. And ideally, you would like your new team member to understand and remember them.
Which means they have to be brief, clear, and simple.
Your current OKRs may be too long or full of jargon, big words, and bullet points. They’re not memorable, and if you want OKRs to direct day-to-day work, you want people to remember them.
Ruthlessly simplify and clarify to pass the hallway test.
You might call this the 80% test, but let’s stretch.
OKRs must govern the work of the team. That’s all the work, not just some of it. Or at least 90% of the work. Otherwise, you have fake OKRs.
The 90% test rests on a crucial assumption: that your work, the tactical, day-to-day, executes your business strategy. Obvious. You set (and or align to) a strategy, define tactics, and execute—that’s what you and the team are paid for, right?
You might be surprised how many other “types” of work crop up that don’t execute. “Business as usual.” “Fire drills.” “Busy work.” Let’s deal with them in order.
“Business as usual” is the big suck. It happens when OKRs are overly focused on the shiny new work and don’t take account of the core work of the business—the type that keeps the lights on and money rolling in. Make sure your OKRs encompass the entire strategy, not just the transformative part.
“Fire drills” you will never get rid of—the email from the boss over the weekend, the project missing deadlines, and other assorted sparks. But you can minimize them. Use OKRs to separate fire drills that are truly urgent and important from those that just appear urgent.
“Busy work” is where OKRs are your friend. If it’s not executing strategy, don’t do it. If the reason to preserve that work is “because we’ve always done this,” then watch out.
Use the 90% test so that you and the team are focused on what’s essential and shed everything else.
Look at the Key Results underlying your OKRs.
Ask, “If we achieve all of these Key Results, will we have a good year?” (Or a good quarter, depending on how you set and reset your OKRs). If the answer is yes, you have the correct Key Results. If the answer is no, you’ve missed something.
That’s the “good year” test.
This one’s all about me and a little bit of extra effort.
Per Dan Pink's book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.” Intrinsic effort comes not just from working independently but from a sense of control over one's work and environment.
If your OKRs don’t give control and, crucially, the creativity for the team to approach and solve its own challenges, you don’t have a set of OKRs—you have a task list. If it fails, you have a task list. It’s the quasi-freedom of a TaskRabbit gig worker or an Uber driver: Empowered but not Autonomous.
Assuming you’re not from the North of England, I’ll explain.
Fettle, the word, comes from Norse and Old English. It means "in good condition” or “fit.” As the Industrial Revolution took root, “fettling” and the job of a “fettler” was to take cast iron parts, trim the rough edges off from the casting process, and make the parts fit together.
That is the fettling test—do the parts fit together? As you look across the organization, perhaps a group of directors in the direct reporting line of a function, do the OKRs fit together? Are you using the same measures and the same language for the same KRs, or have some rough edges and unnecessary parts crept in? Do OKRs in one department support and mirror the OKRs of another?
Six tests, six passes. Marvelous.
To OKR or not to OKR, that is the question.
And to answer that question, we must first ask, “What is an OKR?” Similar but different from other alphabet soups of strategic goal-setting frameworks:
MBO— Managing by Objectives. These are OKRs’ older, more rigid, annualized Father. MBOs emphasize personal performance and meeting set targets.
OBP— Outcome-Based Planning. These are OKRs’ longer-term, wonkier Uncle. While OKRs drive strategic initiatives, OBPs explore them, starting with Outcomes and working backward.
KPI— Key Performance Indicators. The costume and scenery of other goal-setting frameworks. So overused, we swim in data and argue over its accuracy, giving us Many Performance Indicators.
The original question is part of a familiar tragedy.
One that starts with lofty ambition, well-argued strategies, and clear principles. The tale ends with fire drills, competing priorities, and urgent requests. In the middle: mixed messages, complexity, and bureaucracy, the ghosts of burnout.
Something is rotten in the state of our strategic planning.
Well-written OKRs flesh out the strategic narrative and bring it to life. They align people, allow engagement and autonomy, and improve productivity. Done well, they define work, tether accountability, and shape a culture of execution. They help people navigate through a dark forest towards a common north star.
Good OKRs begin the job of translating strategy into tactics.
Keep them simple. Make sure each team has a set of OKRs, following a 3x3 structure: Three Objectives, each with three Key Results.
The Objective is a goal that you want to achieve. It's qualitative and motivational. For each Objective, three Key Results specify, measure, and show progress. They are quantitative and trackable.
OKRs must be well-written and clear. They follow a pattern, starting with a verb: Drive. Expand. Launch. Develop. Grow. The Objective concretely and plainly states the goal and, optionally, the rationale behind it.
Key Results move things forward; from “X” to “Y.” That thing is important and measurable: Revenue. Employee Engagement. Customer Satisfaction. Productivity.
Verb + What you want to do + to/for/so that (rationale for the objective).
Increase awareness of the company in the market to increase sales.
Verb + What you will measure + From “X” to “Y.”
Certify 100% of employees on OKR expectations and process within Q1.
Do not make the mistake of setting OKRs and associating them with a single person.
OKRs work for teams, not individuals. For example, Ophelia, a Chief Product Officer, might set her team’s OKRs at the beginning of the year. At the strategic, enterprise level, goals may exist that involve capturing new market segments, rolling out enhanced functionality, and launching new products.
Ophelia’s product team would support those goals.
Her top-level Objectives in her OKRs might be:
These are good. They follow the formula for good Objectives. The goals are clear. Assume also that each of these objectives has three clear, quantifiable KRs along with it.
But here’s the important point. These are not her OKRs. They are the OKRs of the product team. Ophelia’s job is to hold the team accountable to these OKRs.
Next up for Ophelia—to set OKRs down through her organization.
Every team in an organization should operate against a set of OKRs.
The teams’ OKRs either align with the OKRs of the layer above or translate them. At each rung on the ladder, the OKR must be strategic enough to lift and align the work to the goals of the business and concrete enough to drive practical execution.
You would align your OKRs if your team's scope of responsibility is a territory. Sales teams, obviously, but also, for example, HR Business Partners. In the first case, a sales team might have an Objective to increase same account revenue by five percent. Each sales team in a territory would directly align with that Objective. The KRs might vary, but the team’s Objective mirrors the Objective in the layer above.
For teams not organized by territory, OKRs are translated through the organization. They support and contribute to objectives higher in the business, given the role and scope of the team.
So, for example, in the case of the Ophelia, the Chief Product Officer. She has several teams reporting to her. The responsibilities and scope of the Product Design and UX team are very different from the scope and responsibilities of the Product Engineering team.
The Product Design and UX team might have the following Objectives:
Whereas the Product Engineering team has the following:
Both sets are well-written Objectives, yet they are clearly different. They do not directly align with the Product Team’s objectives. Rather, they are a translation of them, given each team's pressing needs, scope, and role.
Importantly, each team's objectives support the higher-order goals.
For example, the Product Design team’s Design a simpler, more user-friendly interface supports and translates Elevate our product experience to exceed evolving customer expectations. For the people on that team, the Objective and its accompanying KRs, are more concrete and
Objectives are written in such a way that the team has both alignment with the strategy and the autonomy to create, innovate, and execute.
Don’t set OKRs in isolation. Revision and calibration takes time. And don’t set them as a form-filling exercise. OKRs are best set as an output of strategy. Follow the Vision, Mission, and Goals of the business.
Have the strategic, goal-setting conversation in your team, and use that as the jumping-off point to set and clarify OKRs.
If you haven’t brought the team into the process yet, now is the time to do so. Clarify with them the strategy and goals of the business, as well as your Objectives to bring them into the conversation.
OKRs, once set, become part of the rhythm of work.
That working rhythm keeps teams tactically rather than transactionally focused. Setting OKRs occurs at the beginning of Q1. A lighter re-examination and re-set of those OKRs occurs at the end of each quarter. This allows an agile approach to execute strategy.
You have set and have shared ownership of the team’s OKRs.
Now, work with team members to develop initiatives, action plans and progress to advance them. Schedule regular check-ins (weekly or bi-weekly) to discuss progress.
You have elevated some KPIs as part of your Key Results. Track them, and discuss them transparently. Teach. Coach and provide feedback to your team around progress. Encourage collaboration, learn from failure, and celebrate progress.
Keep aligning activities to OKRs. Use them to ruthlessly prioritize. Take away busywork (any work that doesn’t help you set or execute on the OKRs.)
Are you using OKRs? That is now the question.
It was spring, 1989. De La Soul’s hit single “Me, Myself and I” was atop the Billboard R&B chart.
I was one of the younger members of the PMHS Varsity Tennis Team (Go Pelicans!), and had just won a thrilling match……in my mind, at least. I ran over to an older teammate, and could not contain my excitement.
I extolled my grit and “never give up” attitude as I was down big and had just won in a 3rd set tiebreaker! Rather than sharing in my elation, my teammate stood up, walked away and muttered: “tell me more about how great you are.”
I sat perplexed on the bench with just me, myself, and I.
While my younger self can be forgiven for my self-aggrandizement, it is a common trap..
But, it’s not our fault.
It’s how we are wired. According to Scientific American, we spend 60 percent of our conversations talking about ourselves (80 percent when we’re on social media). Neurological studies show that our bodies release dopamine when we do. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a young kid sharing your tennis triumph or a business leader describing your vision or strategy.
As my partner Gavin McMahon says “we know too much and are too passionate about it.”
The problem is this: those same neurological studies show that your audience becomes disengaged when you focus on yourself, your views, your strategy, etc. It doesn’t take a neuroscientist to understand that if you flip the script, and make the conversation about them, engagement increases and they are the ones producing feel good chemicals.
In her recently released 2nd book, The Leadership Conversation fassforward Chair Rose Fass states that “Leadership is a privilege.” True leadership is about people who work with you, and not for you.
As leaders our default is to have 80/20 conversations in which we drive 80% of the conversation, and others get 20% of the airtime.
Using leadership tools that fassforward has refined over the past 22 years, I created the simple concept of 20/80 conversations to show our clients how to have more effective leadership conversations.
#1 Think about how other people think
Our belief is that it’s imperative to understand how you think, so that you can understand how others think.
We define the 4 elements of your thinking pattern as Courage (think Vladamir Zolenskyy), Ethics (think Mother Theresa), Vision (think Martin Luther King Jr.), and Reality (think Ruth Bader Ginsberg).
If you are a courage-based leader, but are talking to someone who is an ethics-based thinker, avoid your impulse to talk about taking action, deadlines, and moving forward. Instead, focus the conversation around collaboration, getting buy-in, socializing the idea, etc.
If they are a vision-based thinker, have conversations for possibility, ask about their ideas, what’s inspiring them, and what’s next. If they are a reality-based thinker, have conversations for facts & assessment. Ask about they’re current focus and their thoughts on current challenges.
#2 T-leaf your conversations
“T-leafing” is a tool we created to help you apply your understanding of their thinking pattern to an effective conversation. It prepares you for conversations by having you think about what they want to feel, know and do before you decide what you want them to feel, know and do.
It addresses the universal challenge outlined by Dale Carnegie: “the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want, and show them how to get it.”
This is especially effective before leadership team or board meetings. T-leafing allows you to put yourself in their shoes, and speak to their listening.
#3 Flip the script
Now that you are prepared for the conversation, let them know up front that you are flipping the script and will be primarily in listening mode.
This is particularly helpful when you are in a new leadership role or having a performance. Formal performance reviews are typically 1-2 times per year. However, as my colleague Frank Mazza writes, managing performance should happen throughout the year.
During your next conversation about performance, ask your colleague to provide their own feedback. This conversation will likely go down 2 paths:
#4 Practice Attentive Listening
My colleague Jill Vander Putten often reminds our team that “listening is not waiting for your turn to speak.”
Too often when someone is talking, we are formulating our response rather than truly listening to them. Attentive listening means a singular focus on what they are saying, making consistent eye contact, nodding, and keeping your devices and other distractions away.
This is particularly applicable to video calls. We all know when someone is multitasking with email, IMs, or texts. Attentive listening on a video call means looking into the camera to replicate eye contact. Or if it is more natural to look into their eyes on video, move the video window as close to under your camera as you can.
It also means getting comfortable with silence.
Often, profound insights emerge when you provide the space for others to think and express themselves without interruption. You can also embrace silence as you formulate a thoughtful response rather than jumping in as soon as they’re done speaking.
#5 Don’t say “Look” or “Listen.” Do say their Name.
Have you ever thought about the irony of saying “listen” or “look” when you are talking to someone? If you have to say “listen” or “look” you are not having an effective leadership conversation.
These are filler words, similar to my old go to “ummmm”, but worse, as you are making a command (a conversation killer). These words buy you time while you think about what you are going to say next. It often means your words are outpacing your thoughts, you are unprepared, or are uncomfortable with silence (see above).
Embrace the silence, ask a thoughtful question, or if you need a filler word, use their name (another dopamine trigger).
#6 Summarize what you heard and next steps
If saying their name is a dopamine trigger, reciting their thoughts, ideas, or visions back to them is a dopamine tsunami.
This is a great way to validate that you have heard what they have to say, and are not having a “chocolate conversation.” If you did not understand everything they said, ask for clarification. 20/80 conversations are worthless if they’re just an exercise to make your colleagues feel heard.
Ending the conversation by acknowledging what they said and letting them know how you plan to act on it is the key to a successful leadership conversation.
The best leaders surround themselves with those that are smarter than they are and think differently than they do.
In my time on Wall Street and as an Executive Coach, I think this is one of the most difficult things for a leader to do. Just as we are wired to make ourselves our own favorite subject, we are also wired for self-preservation.
20/80 conversations are a great way to validate that you have a strong leadership team. If you are not leaning on your team to drive the strategy, vision, and future of your business, then you too will fall into the trap of making it all about “me, myself and I.”
AI is a wild frontier.
As you first explore the realm, it feels part science project, part Oregon trail, part Twilight Zone. If you're skeptical about its unpredictable nature, consider this revelation from DeepMind, an Alphabet/Google subsidiary. Researchers found that instructing an AI like ChatGPT to “take a deep breath and work through the problem step-by-step” nearly tripled the accuracy of its response.
OMG. Take a breath and think about that.
This finding questions the age-old principle of "garbage in, garbage out." Through a technique known as Optimization by PROmpting (OPRO), researchers are adopting a meta-strategy to extract more accurate responses from AI. They're essentially having one AI guide another.
When those same researchers subjected an AI to a standard set of high-school math problems, it barely passed, with an accuracy of 34%.
A solid “F.”
When prompted to “think step by step,” the AI got better. The accuracy score leapt to 71.8%. The game changer? Asking the AI to “take a deep breath and think step-by-step.”
Wild.
It’s time to adapt or... get better at prompting.
Generative AI is so startling because it mimics a very human quirk — the ability to learn and adapt. And it does so relentlessly, which should serve as a kick in the pants to all of us. But, like any machine, you get better results if you know how to use it. So it is with AI. The challenge for us isn’t just about getting answers; it’s about asking the right questions.
AI is not just a tool; it's a force multiplier for those who know how to wield it.
Simple prompts are useful. Type in “TLDR:” before cutting and pasting an email from your boss, and a rambling email turns into a clear explanation.
For a more complete list of handy prompts, here’s a free resource we made.
Or, you could take a course in prompt engineering. DAIR.AI has a great—and free—Prompt Engineering Guide.
To get the best out of generative AI, use the input/output model of prompt engineering.
At fassforward, we used this model to do something that would have been humanly possible but tedious and terrifically expensive—using AI to accurately describe an organization’s culture.
The AI: In this case, Anthropic’s Claude.
The input: We gave the AI input on how to act (as a business anthropologist) and how to frame the problem (fassforward’s proprietary cultural framework) as well as reams of data to sift through (ten thousand rows of clean, but unstructured verbatim employee feedback).
The output: We specified the output format (a number of positive, neutral, and negative cultural aspects), told Claude what we were NOT interested in, and gave it an example of what an output might look like.
The result: Work that would have taken months, ready in hours. A practical and actionable description of a corporate culture.
While perhaps not as groundbreaking as predicting 3D protein structures, it is a testament to the transformative power of generative AI.
Follow the input/output model. First, the input.
Ask the AI to act as an expert. Are you seeking advice from an expert chef or an award-winning screenwriter?
Next, offer a framework. If you have a specific way of understanding culture or strategy, include it here.
Then, share any crucial data you have. This could be raw data or even a draft you've written.
Task the AI, outlining the work you want it to perform.
And finally, tell it what not to do, such as words or subjects to steer clear of.
Clearly state the output you are looking for.
Format the output you want. Are you looking for a listicle? You want the three different versions? Or the output organized as a table?
Who is your audience? Giving guidance on who’s consuming your output will guide the AI’s level and tone.
Give an example of what you want. This gives the AI something concrete to work from.
Rank or Rate the output in some way.
And remember, it’s a conversation. An ongoing dialogue can only refine the output.
Here’s more detail on each step.
ChatGPT, Claude, and Bard are general LLMs. But in many cases, you might want the AI to act as an expert... data analyst, marketing strategist, project manager, communicator/ storyteller, HR advisor, leadership coach, or business anthropologist.
Ask the AI to “act as” an expert. This will guide it to a better outcome.
Example prompt line: Act as an expert [Act as an expert...]
Generative AIs, like humans, crave context. It's not just useful; it's vital for effective interaction.
Let's say you've tasked the AI to act as a business strategist. Share your company's goals, challenges, and strategic frameworks like the Balanced Scorecard or Playing to Win. This context sharpens the AI's advice, aligning it with your specific needs. The more you share, the better the AI performs.
Example prompt line: Use the [Framework Name] to guide your work.
The devil is in the data. If you've tasked the AI to act as a project manager, the specifics you offer—timelines, available resources, and current project status—are crucial. One of the advantages of AI is you don’t need structured data, but avoid a data dump; take the time to provide clean, curated information.
The more focused your data, the more precise and actionable the AI's project plan will be. This is the foundation for a useful result.
The task you outline is the AI's roadmap. For instance, if you've asked the AI to act as an expert sales coach, be specific. Are you looking for cold-calling scripts or strategies to upsell existing clients?
A well-defined task gives you a well-defined answer.
Example prompt line: Make your work [Prompt word] — OR — Give me [Prompt word] answers
Be explicit about what you do not want. That is as important as specifying what you do want. For example, if you've asked the AI to act as a project manager, you might want to specify that you're not interested in methodologies that require a long lead time or high costs. This could be as simple as saying, "Avoid Agile or Six Sigma approaches."
With boundaries, you're not only preventing unwanted outcomes but guiding the AI to spend its computational power on generating the most relevant and useful solutions for you.
Example prompt line: Do NOT reply with [Do not/ Avoid]
Now you have the input, it’s time for the output.
You can save time by specifying the format you are looking for. This could be a list. You might want a table. Maybe you are looking for step-by-step instructions. In what way is it easiest for you to consume the information?
Example prompt line: Output as a [Output Format]
In a flood of information, relevance beats data. Tune your output to grab the attention of your audience. Specify who the audience is. For example, “produce output suitable for an executive audience.”
This will prompt the AI to be concise and focus on key points. Better yet, simplify and clarify the output. Add “make it understandable for a 6th-grade level.”
Example prompt line: Target your work for an [Audience type] audience.
An example serves as a concrete model for the AI. If you're asking the AI to draft a business proposal, for instance, providing a sample proposal can set the tone, style, and structure you're aiming for.
Think of it as giving the AI a "north star" to guide its output. The closer your example is to what you want, the more useful the AI's output will be. It's like showing a stylist a picture of the haircut you want; what you see is (hopefully) what you'll get.
Organizing output isn't just about answers; it's about value. Whether you're looking for a list of marketing tactics or project milestones, specifying a ranking or rating provides a nuanced understanding
Ask the AI to prioritize its suggestions based on any number of criteria: feasibility, impact, urgency, confidence. This helps you focus on what's important and gives you a sense of the AI's certainty in each recommendation.
You could also request categorical groupings, like "high-impact but resource-intensive" versus "low-hanging fruit." Think of it as a way to add another layer of utility to the AI's output, making it easier for you to take action.
Example prompt line: Categorize the output by [Ranking and rating] in this [Format].
AI has been around for years. What made ChatGPT blow up? I suspect it wasn’t the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) but the Chat. The ability to have conversations. It lowered the bar for accessibility to AI from a specialized few to the rest of us.
Don’t forget the chat part in your prompting.
You might hear the terms “iterative prompting,” “conversational threading,” or “chain-of-thought” prompting.
Iterative prompting is the back-and-forth between you and ChatGPT (or Bard or Claude). It’s the sense of conversation that will provide more nuance and refinement in each successive answer.
Conversational threading isn’t something you do. It’s the AI. Keeping track of what was said earlier so—like a human—it maintains context in the conversation.
Chain of thought prompting is asking for the AI to work through a step-by-step solution. Particularly helpful when it seems confused, overwhelmed, or going off the rails.
Remember, it’s a wild frontier. The advice contained here may be horribly out of date in a year.
Meanwhile, take a deep breath, follow the duck, and watch the elephant.
One-pagers are a great way to communicate your brand's value proposition in a concise and effective way, but they can be tricky to design.
Have you ever been asked to design a one-pager but didn't know where to start?
Don't worry, I'm here to help! In this article, I'll share five tips to help you create a one-pager that is both informative and visually appealing.
What is the purpose of your one-pager?
Who is your audience?
Consider the purpose, audience and information.
My use case was designing a letter-sized document for the marketing team. I have five pages of text to fit on one page, and the text doesn't include any visuals or branding. This means I need to add more elements and do it without losing any important information.
Read and understand the content of your one-pager carefully. This will help you to identify the most important information and to organize it in a way that is easy to read.
Think about the relationships between the different pieces of information. How are they connected? What is the most important information for your audience to know?
The more you understand the content, the better you will able to communicate it.
Understanding the content helps me with brainstorming design ideas, and creating visual metaphors. This helps me tap into my design knowledge and come up with creative solutions.
A grid is a basic design principle — it can help you to create a balanced and organized layout. It is a system of horizontal and vertical lines used to place your content on the page.
Grids are a design superpower for everyone, from first-year students to experienced pros.
Using a grid will help you to keep your design organized and to avoid making unnecessary design choices.
Don't be afraid to experiment with different layouts and designs. Once you have a draft(s), get feedback from others and make changes as needed.
I did 10 iterations, trying out different layouts. Most teams find it helpful to have something to respond to, even if it's just a rough draft. High-fidelity mockups are great for these conversations. I chatted with our designers and writers, and together we were able to improve the organization of the information by making the sections clearer and adding labels. We also freed up more white space by cutting down on the text.
It's important to be able to communicate your ideas clearly and receive feedback openly.
At our office, we have a saying: "Eat our own dog food." It means we follow the advice we give to our clients. In this case, putting the audience at the center of the story. Switching the words from "about us" to "about them" is a big step and it's essential for successful business storytelling.
I often have to sift through a lot of ideas and feedback from different stakeholders. It's important to decide what to keep and what to ditch. Try using your own mental checklist to decide when a design is ready.
For instance:
The stakeholders and I are happy with it, so I'm going to proofread it again and then call it done!
You made it to the end! As a reward, here's a bonus tip: have fun! I had a blast creating this one-pager, and I think it's our best effort yet at telling the fassforward story.
Good luck with your own one-pager!
A special thanks to everyone who worked on this: Jess Gozur, Eugene Yoon, Andreas Pichaeli, Shannon Cullen, and Gavin McMahon.
“I’m hungry. What can I make with a parsnip?”
Words guaranteed to spike the stress levels of any Mother. The child in question: a university student. These words usually trigger a frantic Google search, looking for quick and easy parsnip-based recipes to feed a starving twenty-year-old.
The story is true. The parsnip, irrelevant.
What is relevant is how we use Google. Faced with the same situation, you would type in the search bar, “parsnip recipe.” Google autocomplete might helpfully suggest “parsnip recipe ideas,” “parsnip recipes roasted,” or “parsnip recipes easy.” You click on “parsnip recipes easy,” aware of your son’s culinary skills. If you have used Google autocomplete, congratulations, you’re already using AI.
Meanwhile, back to the parsnip.
You know how the story goes—time whiled away clicking on food blogs, scanning through recipes, only to discover you don’t have Italian Seasoning.
Click. Scan. Repeat. Click. Scan. Repeat. If only there were an easier way. Something magical that could work on our behalf, step in and accurately predict what we need, and guide us on the way.
There is. It’s here. AI.
Science-fiction genius Arthur C. Clarke, he of the plummy British accent, horn-rimmed glasses, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Rendezvous with Rama fame, defined three “laws” of prediction. The most famous, his third law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." For non-experts, magic is a good approximation of AI.
Magic can explain how AI works.
Large Language Models (LLMs) like Google’s Bard, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or Anthropic’s Claude predict a token. Picture the token as a magic coin. On one side of the magic coin is a dumb guess; on the other is a really good guess. The mystic ingredient is that the coin, more often than not, lands on the side of the really good guess. But there’s a downside. The coin isn’t that big. The token only has room for a word or a few characters. When the AI you’re chatting with is “speaking” to you, it’s rapidly flipping its magic coin.
Each flip predictably charmed, an artificial sleight of hand appearing as thought.
As an AI progresses through its training, the coin’s odds of unnervingly accurate prediction increase—to the point where it lands, almost all the time, on the side of a really good guess. A few good guesses turn into intelligent sentences. Strings of them turn into coherent answers.
You can see the coin flip in action and begin to understand how an AI works by seeing an approximated response to a child-like question.
That question provides insight into how LLMs are trained.
An AI, in response to “Why is the sky blue?” might answer the question differently, depending on its stage of development.
*Note: This table and its approximations were produced by ChatGPT4.
The increasing cost of training explains why, despite all the AI-washing, few companies are large enough or well-financed enough to enter the AI arms race with their own Large Language Models.
Of course, counting AI as a magic coin is magical thinking.
Reality is more complex. Multi-layered, interconnected neural networks talk to each other—algorithms pass along information—each “coin flip” is better informed by a rich history of past data, complicated calculations, and previous “coin flips.”
Clarke’s magic comes from advanced mathematical algorithms and statistical models.
ChatGPT hit the hype train like a hurricane.
In five days in November 2022, ChatGPT hit one hundred million users. Goliaths like TikTok took nine months to reach the same mark. Netflix took three and a half years.
Eight months later, ChatGPT’s users are on the decline.
Why? Concerns about privacy and regulation might be a factor. Getting burnt by hallucinations (AI just making stuff up) may be another. A third reason could be large companies banning the use of AI at work, among them Apple, JP Morgan Chase, Gartner, and Verizon, citing data leakage concerns. Another—is that after the initial trial period, people are back to Google.
If you treat AI like Google, you’re doing it wrong.
My supposition is that we know AI is a thing; we know it can do things, but we (most of us) haven’t figured out how to make good use of it yet. We’re treating AI like Google. Asking it questions and expecting immediate answers.
Which brings us back to the parsnip and leads to prompt engineering.
Asking Google, “What can I make with a parsnip?” will bring you over six million results; far too much information to process in your lifetime. At the top, Google has used AI in the background to helpfully show you recipes like “Simple Parsnips with Oil and Herbs.” Or lists, like “25 Best Ways to Cook Parsnips.”
Then you run into the problem that, while you really like the sound of Carrot Parsnip Soup, you don’t have any carrots.
Rohit Chauhan, Executive Vice President of AI at Mastercard, explains why we’re stuck in an old way of thinking.
“It’s helpful to think of computers and AI as a triangle. The corners of the triangle are input, output, and algorithms. With a computer, you define the algorithm, and you feed the computer input. You get output.
An example is a calculator. The algorithm is mathematical; the input is two plus two, and the output you would get is four.
AI changes the triangle. You feed AI input. You define what output you would like. AI gives you the algorithm.”
In the Google example, the algorithm is already defined: find published information on the Internet based on the keywords provided. You provide the input. What can I make with a parsnip? Google spits out six million results.
Don’t get me wrong. This is a magical leap from the dawn of the Internet, where we had to dial up a modem, click through AOL’s cooking section, and find a recipe. It’s a step up from books.
We are doing less work. But we still have work to do.
With the current iteration of Google, the work is click, scan, repeat. Click. Scan. Repeat. Sorting and sifting through results to get to something you want to eat and can cook.
With AI, it’s different. It’s input and output.
Go to ChatGPT, or Bard, or Claude, and feed it input. I have a Parsnip, some pasta, garlic, olive oil, and various herbs. Define the output you would like. Act as an expert chef. Give me something tasty that I can make for two people. I don’t have much time, and I am not a great cook.
Generative AI will give you the algorithm—the recipe:
A step-by-step guide to Roasted Parsnip and Garlic Herb Pasta.
That’s a step up from Google, which gives you a thousand recipes and leaves you with more work.
To use AI well—to perform the magic—we have to think about input and output and start looking for algorithms.
This flips our thinking.
If you haven’t played with them yet, try out Claude 2 by Anthropic, Bard by Google AI, and ChatGPT by OpenAI. They are all slightly different.
Each model has its own strengths and weaknesses. I’ve found Claude and ChatGPT to be the most useful of the big three.
My unofficial synopsis, as of the end of 2023, is that they’re like three tween siblings. Claude is the smart one, ChatGPT is the more versatile one, and Bard tries hard. Oh, and they all lie—hallucinating—the technical term for a Gen AI going off the rails and making stuff up.
You still have to be smarter, more versatile, and try harder.
Try Claude 2 for obtaining accurate and unbiased responses, particularly when precision matters. Claude stands out for its focus on reducing bias. It seems slightly brighter than the others. It also has a more updated training data cutoff, making its output more current.
ChatGPT, to me, is more versatile, especially with its array of plugins. Try ChatGPT for creative writing projects and brainstorming sessions where context and nuance are important. And it's just gotten even better with Turbo, custom GPTs, and enterprise services.
Bard, I think, is competent. It has some neat tricks. It has a double-check “Google it” feature, which can help catch the hallucinations. Most useful in the world of distributed work is its ability to share chats and prompts. It’s the clunkiest of the three, but with Google behind it, I imagine it won’t stay that way for long.
To help you on your way, here’s a handy dandy prompt guide.
It’s time to learn some magic tricks with AI.
“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
2001: A red glass eye gleams as HAL 9000 politely refuses to open the pod-bay doors. Psychotic space AI tries to kill clean-shaven, mild-mannered astronaut.
“I’ll be back.”
1984: A time-traveling T-800 trips in from the near future to kill anyone named Sarah Connor.
Every time—in books and movies—humans give machines the power to think, bad things happen. It’s not just Kubrik or Schwarzenegger. When the AI is beautiful (Ex Machina), a child (The Creator), or built to defend humankind (Ultron), the formula is the same—AI plus humans equals disaster.
The horror makes a good movie and a great headline.
February 16, 1999: Headlines screamed. “Armageddon! Year 2000 computer bug will turn machine against man!” 319 days later, calm settled in. “World Rejoices; Y2K bug is quiet.” If you lived through the 90s, you remember the existential threat of technology run amok.
It’s always this way.
From smallpox vaccines rumored to turn you into a cow to radio waves accused of mind control and trains so fast they'd make Victorian ladies swoon—the pattern of hype and horror is all too familiar.
Now, AI: “How could AI Destroy Humanity?” (The New York Times).
Fiction is almost always more frightening than fact.
“The AI ‘gold rush’ is here. What will it bring?” (The Washington Post)
Businesses are paying attention.
AI’s impact will be massive. Tom Wilson, CEO of Allstate, predicts that AI will “rip through this economy like a Tsunami.”
Michael Miebach, CEO of Mastercard, compares AI to electricity, “It powers our fraud prevention and personalization services. It helps us protect over 125 billion – yes, billion – transactions on our network every year. We’re looking to do even more with AI.”
PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests that AI could boost global GDP by $15.7 trillion by 2030, with $3.7 trillion of that impact in North America. That equates to $30 million of GDP per minute, born from productivity and products.
We’ve noticed. 2023 was AI’s coming out party, dressed by ChatGPT.
Everywhere.
Bala Maddali, head of conversational AI at Verizon, breaks it down.
“AI already operates in the background, unseen and untouched—for example, email filtering or fraud detection. Then, there are AI-powered experiences—traffic prediction in Google Maps or Netflix’s recommendation engine. And finally, at its most visible, where AI itself is the experience. Here, humans interact directly with AI. ChatGPT, Siri, Alexa...”
Gains in productivity come from replacing or augmenting human labor. This allows us to work more effectively or on higher-value tasks. Meanwhile, AI operates behind the scenes in products like Google’s autocomplete, Spotify, and Quickbooks. Yet to come: a range of as-yet-not-invented, increasingly sophisticated products poised to boost consumer and business demand.
$15.7 trillion reasons to pay attention to AI.
Here’s a definition for non-experts by a non-expert.
AI is about crafting machines to think, speak, move, and see—like (or better than) humans.
AI is a big, geeky topic.
As newcomers, we often glimpse one part of the elephant — ChatGPT, Boston Dynamics robots, self-driving cars — and think we see the whole thing.
What I'll tackle here is the aspect I believe we'll quickly get familiar with—the part where AI isn't just a tool but the experience itself. The subset of Machine Learning and Deep Learning that gives us something to think with—an intelligence that can augment our intelligence—Generative AI.
If you’re overwhelmed by all the autonomous, neural, learning, AI-related word-smithing, and word-hacking, here’s a quick primer.
#AI: Artificial Intelligence: the ability of machines to mimic human thinking or actions, often through problem-solving or learning.
#Anthropomorphization: The attribution of human qualities to non-human entities, such as machines or AI models. Try not to say please and thank you.
#ML: Machine Learning, a technique where computers learn from data without being explicitly told how to perform a task.
#DeepLearning: A type of machine learning that uses multi-layered neural networks to analyze various factors of data.
#NeuralNetworks: Computing systems inspired by the human brain, made up of interconnected nodes, used to process information.
#GenerativeAI: AI that creates new content, like images or text, by learning from existing data, recognizing patterns, and making predictions.
#LLM: Large Language Model, a type of deep learning model trained on vast amounts of text to understand and generate language.
#ChatGPT: An AI chatbot by OpenAI that can converse and answer questions.
#OpenAI: A company focused on creating and promoting friendly AI for the benefit of all.
#Bard: Google's AI chatbot designed for conversation; still experimental.
#Claude: A chatbot by Anthropic aiming for safe and ethical AI conversations.
#Anthropic: A company focused on creating AI to be helpful, harmless, and honest.
#ImageGenerationModels: AI models that create new images based on learned data.
#DALL-E: An AI by OpenAI that turns text descriptions into images.
#Factuality: The accuracy or truthfulness of the information generated by a generative AI model.
#Midjourney: An AI tool similar to DALL-E focused on generating artwork.
#Transformers: A type of algorithm in a neural network architecture that's particularly good at handling sequences like text.
#SupervisedLearning: Training AI using labeled data, where the answer is provided.
#UnsupervisedLearning: Training AI using data without explicit answers, letting it find patterns on its own.
#ReinforcementLearning: Training AI through trial and error, rewarding it for the right decisions.
#NLP: Natural Language Processing, making computers understand and generate human language.
#PromptEngineering: The technique of crafting specific inputs to get the best outputs from AI models.
#Robotics: The science of designing, building, and using robots for tasks.
#ComputerVision: Giving machines the ability to interpret and act on visual data.
*All definitions provided by ChatGPT-4
Now that we're fluent in AI-speak, let's explore why it's more than a buzzword—it's a game-changer from retail floors to boardrooms. Sundar Pichai, head of Google, calls AI “more profound than fire.”
That’s big.
Bigger than computers. Even bigger than the internet? Let’s try to size this latest wave of technology.
To do that, I spoke to Rohit Chauhan, Executive Vice President of AI at Mastercard, as he explained it:
“In the 1980s, computing became affordable. The cost of calculation effectively went to zero. Business challenges were reframed to become arithmetic problems characterized by spreadsheets and databases.
In the 1990s, the Internet effectively brought the cost of communication down to zero. Business challenges were reframed as communication problems characterized by APIs, email, and media.
Now, AI will bring the cost of prediction down to zero. Business challenges will be reframed as prediction problems. The scope and impact on productivity of AI will be bigger than computing and the Internet combined.”
Inevitably, technology comes at us fast and changes things slowly.
Email was the province of government and academic institutions when it was first invented in the 1970s. By the time Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan rom-commed to You’ve Got Mail in the 1990s, it had reached a majority. In the first and second decades of the twentieth century, email had spammed its way to near-ubiquity.
Waves of technology are crashing faster and faster.
Instead of the forty years of email, Social Media spread quickly, taking less than twenty years to become part of the fabric of our lives. Technology waves build on each other; we went from the first iPhone as a prized possession to the what-number-are we-on-now of the iPhone 14 less than fifteen years later.
We don’t know—yet—how big the AI wave will be. Pichai could be right.
The idea that AI paves the way for a spectacular future is shared by Emad Isaac. He’s the Chief Data Technology Officer at Allstate and is paving the way for the responsible use of AI within the company, as he puts it:
“It’s a little like learning to drive a car. When you’re young and you first get behind the wheel, it’s terrifying. A massive, powerful machine that can be dangerous if you can’t operate it properly. So you sit with an expert — a driving instructor — and gradually learn how to operate it. There will be a few minor incidents along the way, but over time and with practice, we get to the point where today, we drive and don’t even think about the act of driving anymore.
AI is like that. In time, it becomes routine to use and interact with. However, there’s danger in the hype cycle. That we don’t understand its promise and its limitations. We overplay the return and don’t understand the investment.
One thing I am certain about; it’s not going to replace people. But it will change the way people work.”
Ready or not, AI is here, and we—humans—need to get to grips with it.
Three little words help you tell better stories.
Have you ever wondered why some people are great storytellers and others not so much?
The answer is [and then].
You've heard it before. Blah...blah... blah... [And then] Blah...blah... blah... [And then] Blah...blah... blah... [And then].
It's not the Blah...blah... blah... that makes you reach for a double shot of espresso. It's the [and then] that makes you wish for a Red Bull chaser.
[And then] is monotonous, dry, and boring.
[And then] is a list you could put in any order. Your brain doesn’t like it. Your brain listens for a twist, a reason, a cause and effect in the story. But with [and then], it doesn't get it. Instead, it gets the dry, droning, over-explanation of Uncle Colm in Derry Girls.
You don't want [and then], you want a connector.
Connectors are words that build a logical thread in your argument. They are conjunctions used to establish relationships between ideas and events. They're the antidote to [and then] and the nexus of your narrative.
Three words: [But], [therefore], and [meanwhile].
Tony Zhou is a filmmaker and video essayist known for his YouTube series "Every Frame a Painting." In one essay, Zhou examines Orson Welles's storytelling technique and his use of three little words as narrative devices on display in the movie F is for Fake.
[But]: This word introduces the idea of opposition. For example, the hero has done something, but the villain has done something to oppose it.
In Zhou’s F is for Fake video example:
“You’re a painter; why do you want people to do fakes?” [But] “Because the fakes are as good as the real ones, then there’s a market, and there’s a demand.”
[Therefore]: This word introduces the idea of progression. For example, the hero has done something, and therefore the world adjusts to her actions, usually introducing a new struggle the hero must overcome.
Back to Zhou’s F is for Fake example:
[Therefore] “If you didn’t have an art market, then fakers could not exist.”
[Meanwhile]: This word introduces the idea of parallelism, of two things happening at the same time. For example, the hero is saving the world. Meanwhile, her friend is off dealing with the fallout.
Zhou makes this work in an essay film:
“Let’s say you have two stories. Let one of them build up. When it reaches peak interest, switch to the other. Let this one build. And when this gets to the top, go back to the first.”
This connecting logic is a must-have for filmmakers. It's equally applicable to narratives of all stripes, from a board deck to Bridget Jones's Diary.
It works to build a structure that isn’t boring.
That is if you want to up your business storytelling game.
[But] isn't just a new struggle for a hero. It can be used to introduce a problem or challenge after a point has been made.
For instance, you have just pointed out a successful result. E.g., "Our sales have increased by 20%." The next slide is a "but." E.g., "But our profit margins have shrunk.
[Therefore] may not be the world embracing our hero's actions. It can be used to present a solution to the situation on the previous slide.
For instance, if one slide presents a problem. E.g., "Our profit margins are shrinking," the next slide could present a solution using "therefore," E.g., "Therefore, we need to reduce our production costs."
[Meanwhile] can introduce a parallel development or process.
For instance, if one slide talks about efforts to reduce production costs, the next slide could discuss another aspect of the business using "meanwhile"
E.g., "Meanwhile, our marketing team is working on a new go-to-market campaign."
Or it could be a keynote, sales pitch, or other high-stakes presentation. Whatever it is, “and then” won’t cut it. More [But], [Therefore] and [Meanwhile] will. Which, by the way, will explain the curious reason I’ve been using [ ] around those words. But more on that later.
Think of PowerPoint as a movie or a screenplay.
Movies have storyboards. Three acts. They have beats in the story—moments that propel the story forward. Those moments compel the viewer to process and engage.
Those moments are connected by [but], [therefore] and [meanwhile].
In PowerPoint, the storyboard is the “slide sorter” view. “Grid view” in Google Slides. The three acts are a Hook, Meat, and Payoff. Each slide is a beat in the story. Each slide has a point. Each slide has a headline.
[But], [therefore], and [meanwhile] fall between each headline.
They’re often silent or implied. Therefore, the [ ]. So, an example of a series of slide headlines might look like this.
Last year, our team had tremendous success.
| Sets the stage, highlighting the positive achievements of the company.
[But]
We face significant headwinds in today’s market.
| Introduces a problem or challenge, creating a contrast with the previous positive note.
[Therefore]
Our strategic plan to overcome these headwinds.
| Presents a solution or response to the problem introduced in the previous slide.
[Meanwhile]
Exploring exciting adjacent opportunities in the market.
| Shifts the focus to another topic, discussing new opportunities that are arising at the same time as the company is dealing with its challenges.
[But]
Understanding the risks of these new opportunities.
| Introduces a new problem or challenge, this time related to the new opportunities.
[Therefore]
A strategy to mitigate risks and seize opportunities.
| Presents solutions or responses to the new problem.
[Meanwhile]
Tracking the progress of our ongoing initiatives.
| Shifts the focus again, this time to discuss other initiatives happening simultaneously.
[But]
Identifying areas for improvement in our initiatives.
| Introduces another problem or challenge related to the ongoing initiatives.
[Therefore]
Our comprehensive plan for continuous improvement and growth.
| Presents solutions or responses to the problem, wrapping up the presentation on a positive and forward-looking note.
You can see in this fake set of headlines the transition isn’t an “and then.”
But, therefore, meanwhile, worth a try?
I trust you... ish.
Trust, along with autonomy and flexibility, is an essential ingredient for productivity. If people feel trusted, they are more likely to put in more effort and to go above and beyond.
In a high-trust relationship, we’re more engaged in our work.
Trust makes distributed work ‘work.’ Trust retains and attracts talent. It allows teams to be more collaborative. Trust is a factor that moves us from “my part works” to collective success.
Trust is a factored relationship.
That relationship has many forms: between individuals, between people and information, between teams, a leader and her team, or a customer and a brand. For simplicity, I’ll bundle trust into two groups.
Foundational trusts and functional trusts.
Foundational trusts enable and support team alignment, shared purpose, collaboration, resilience, and performance. Foundational trusts are human, informal relationships. They are intrinsic and emotionally based.
Foundational trusts exist between colleagues who have worked together for years. They have weathered tough days, impossible deadlines, and multiple pivots together and have an unspoken confidence in each other's abilities and understanding of their needs and styles.
Foundational trusts run deep. They enable collective performance.
On the other hand, functional trusts provide supplemental credibility, assurance, and confidence in specific situations, transactions, or partnerships. Functional trusts are formal mechanisms. They are more superficial and situational.
Functional trusts exist between a freelancer and her client. It’s secured through conversations that clarify roles and expectations, the reputation of the client and freelancer (E.g., Employer brand reputation on Glassdoor and seller levels on Fiverr), and the contract itself.
Functional trusts provide confidence in narrower contexts.
Foundational trusts, more than functional trusts, are essential for the team. Bruce Daisley, author of the book Fortitude: The Myth of Resilience, and the Secrets of Inner Strength, alludes to this; “resilience is the collective strength we gain from each other.”
That’s what trust does—build collective strength.
Foundational trusts come in many flavors:
As do functional trusts:
Building trust in a team requires a firm foundation. And that firm foundation is built on vulnerable, human, gut feel, hairs on the back of your neck, relationships.
You have a choice.
If you think of trust as a relationship, you can do something with it. You can actively nurture that relationship or damage it.
Trust isn’t a universal pass or get-out-of-jail-free card. Just like a relationship, trust evolves. There are levels.
At the lowest level of trust, we’re strangers.
Here, we either don’t know much about the other, or we assume a lot and don’t like what we assume. We hold suspicions, assumptions, and inferences about the other’s motives and behaviors.
The upside? Caution protects us from risk. The downside? No collaboration, politicking, territorialism, silos, and low productivity.
The stranger zone lacks foundational bonds. We rely on basic functional trusts based on incentives and deterrence.
This is the next level.
Here, we work with each other as colleagues but tend to stick to our lanes. There are many reasons for this; we might be new to a team, or the team might be new. The pressure of work may force people into their corners. Zoom and hybrid work make it difficult to form social connections and bonds.
This level of trust allows each to do their own thing, with minimal coordination or collaboration. Individuals can work independently and focus on their own goals and objectives.
It feels faster; more productive.
The upside? we’re more transparent with each other. We have role clarity. There are no mal-intentions. We coordinate through email, Slack, and meetings. Consensus is sought, but collaboration—true collaboration—rarely happens.
It’s “my part works” territory.
This is the third circle of trust.
Foundational trust is fueled by shared experiences over time. We become willing partners. I seek out your advice, trusting your involvement. I know you’ll enhance my work.
This goes beyond trusting me to do my job and trusting you to do your job. There is a level of intimacy in the relationship. I also trust you to get involved with my work.
The “keep of the grass” signs disappear.
The downside? Without attention, side-by-side collaboration and coordination can be highly inefficient. It requires significant time and significant effort. By inviting someone in and valuing their input, you leave yourself open—and vulnerable—to criticism.
But, there’s a significant advantage.
Together, we amplify each other's contributions. The “I’s” in team morph into an “e” and an “a.”
Trust is a relationship that allows you to have healthy debate and conflict; it allows you to commit to decisions and align with the team's goals.
But you have to put in the work. That work comes in six C’s.
Research shows that consistent behavior over time builds trust.
If you follow through on promises and your actions align with your words, it establishes you—in people's minds—as reliable and predictable. You are perceived as dependable, which strengthens trust.
The counter is true. Consistently overpromise — say, you commit to deadlines but are constantly late; even for reasons beyond your control, you are not dependable. People trust you not to follow through because that’s what you consistently do.
Be aware of what you commit to. Set realistic expectations. Underpromise and overdeliver, and follow through relentlessly to demonstrate consistency and build trust.
(Sources: Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995; Six, F, 2007)
Concrete rules.
Clear, unambiguous communication cements trust. Studies prove it.
If you work to communicate clearly, you avoid confusion. Misunderstandings are prevented. Transparency of expectations, objectives, decision processes, and reasoning increases mutual understanding and lays a foundation of trust between people.
The opposite erodes trust.
Vague expectations, unclear requirements, and opaque decision-making breed uncertainty. Uncertainty counters the predictability and reliability people want, damaging trust.
Make it your work to clarify objectives, priorities, processes, and, most importantly, the reasoning behind choices. Ask questions to check understanding. Summarize conversations. Leave no room for guesswork, misinterpretation, or ambiguity.
(Sources: Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995; Thomas, G.F., Zolin, R., & Hartman, J.L. 2009)
Competence fosters trust.
Research shows that when you demonstrate the skills and expertise to fulfill obligations, you are perceived as capable and relied upon more.
There are two vital words in that sentence—demonstrate and perceive. It’s not enough to be capable; you have to appear capable. Trust is built on the perception of your competence. Displaying ability through strong performance builds confidence that you can deliver.
In contrast, hyperbole, bravado, and overstatement sew doubts.
Build competence. Even the best improve. They have a growth mindset. Focus on building competence for yourself and your team. Trust flourishes when others experience consistent, capable, performance.
(Sources: Mishra, A.K., 1996; Colquitt, Scott, & LePine, 2007)
Credibility indicates trustworthiness.
Research has shown that people are more likely to trust someone with a good track record.
People judge you. You come off as credible if you have a track record of aligning word and deed. If you honor commitments and uphold principles.
The opposite is true. When words and actions conflict, trust suffers. Even occasional lapses make dependability and integrity seem questionable.
Build credibility by making decisions guided by shared values and modeling ethics in words and deeds. Seek genuine win-wins. Follow through consistently. Trust grows when credibility is established over time.
(Sources: Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995, Whitener, 1997)
Candor and trust are uneven bedfellows.
Transparency builds trust, yet candor makes people uncomfortable. Research shows sharing openly signals authentic intention, even if the news is bad. But you might avoid transparency, dodging unease and sidestepping self-doubt.
This tension exists because candor is difficult. Admitting mistakes, welcoming criticism, and revealing shortcomings are brave but unnatural.
Push past discomfort to encourage candid conversations that build trust. Straight talk. Start small by acknowledging an area of your self-improvement. Ask for blunt critiques. Discuss the long-trunked, grey-eared elephant in the room. With practice, candor becomes easier, bringing relationships closer and building foundational trusts.
(Sources: Wolfe & Kim, 2021; Karau & Williams, 1997)
Caring behaviors nurture trust.
Studies show that expressing empathy, listening actively, and building rapport through compassion deepen foundational trusts.
Demonstrate authentic interest in team members' well-being and human needs. Be vulnerable. Ask thoughtful questions to learn team members' aspirations. Be present and focused when others speak. Provide support, especially during difficult times. Show you view people as whole human beings, not just work resources.
Trust builds when people know you genuinely care. This emotional foundation strengthens collaboration, unlocks discretionary effort, and fosters organizational commitment.
(Sources: Mishra, Aneil K., and Karen E. Mishra. 2005; Colquitt, Jason A., Brent A. Scott, and Jeffery A. LePine. 2007)
Trust me, and work towards a culture where colleagues feel connected. Where they have a sense of community. Where performance soars.
Trust me; I'm a doctor.
Or an engineer. Or trust me, I'm a professional. Or trust me, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Trust is a word we hear a lot in our work—or, more precisely, its lack.
Trust is the superglue that holds teams together. Without it, even the most well-engineered project can fall apart. The "absence of trust" is the first of Patrick Lencioni's five dysfunctions of a team.
That absence leads to other dysfunctions—we fear and avoid conflict, phone in our commitment, and avoid accountability, all of which lead to disastrous results.
With a lack of trust, team members feel hesitant to open up. They won’t rely on each other for support. And in Lencioni’s view, they’re unwilling to be vulnerable with each other.
Trust is a word people frequently use, but mean different things by it. That’s unfortunate. Leadership is messy.
Trust cleans up the mess.
Trust, according to Patrick Lencioni, is the belief in the vulnerability of one another.
In Lencioni’s thinking, leaders must lead by example, showing vulnerability—admitting mistakes, asking for help, and sharing personal stories. Create a safe space where team members can do the same without fear of ridicule or judgment. Be real, be open.
Lencioni sets the stage with vulnerability. Stephen Covey delves into character and competence.
Stephen M. R. Covey, author of the bestseller The Speed of Trust, believes trust is the one thing that changes everything.
To build trust à la Covey, the twins of character and competence are central. Be consistently honest and show you're skilled at what you do. Regularly deliver on your promises—no excuses. Trust accelerates success.
If trust is character and competence, Daniel Goleman wants you to put it on display—with emotional intelligence.
Daniel Goleman, the father of emotional intelligence, describes trust as the glue that holds relationships together.
To build trust in Goleman's vein, master emotional intelligence: recognize and regulate your own emotions while empathizing with others. Build the emotional currency of trust. Make time for one-on-one conversations; see David Frost’s advice on no-agenda check-ins.
Goleman adds the feels. But how are they used? To build relationships.
Bob Burg sees trust as a relationship. For him, it is the foundation of any successful relationship.
To build trust the Bob Burg way, prioritize giving over getting—consistently add value to others' lives without expecting anything in return. Be a reliable resource, always ready to help or offer guidance. Trust is earned generosity.
Building relationships, for some, is hard. It takes bravery.
American professor and writer Brené Brown describes an arena where we engage in vulnerability, risk, and emotional exposure.
Brené Brown’s advice on building trust is to be brave. To embrace vulnerability by sharing your own fears and failures openly with your team. Foster a culture where vulnerability is celebrated, not shamed. In her mind, courage begets trust.
But trust isn’t just bravery, relationship, or philosophy. There’s science behind how we build trust.
Neuroscientist Paul J. Zak researches the brain’s role in trust. For Zak, trust is a mechanism for creating social bonds of all types.
Paul Zak's insights into the chemistry of the brain give us oxytocin-friendly actions to follow: give autonomy, publicly praise, and foster social connections. Make it a habit to celebrate small wins and individual contributions. Trust is social glue.
Not so fast. Trust takes time.
There’s a reason trust is described as a verb, not a noun. It takes work on your part to build trust.
Trust is nuanced, not monolithic.
You would not trust anyone entirely in everything—not even yourself. If you knew me, you might trust me to help with your strategy. If you knew me well, you would not trust me to cook you an edible meal.
Trust is a many splendored thing.
Trust underpins psychological safety, is in the fabric of high-performing teams, and acts as a salve for toxic culture. Inside groups, it’s a social lubricant. Trust amplifies productivity and engagement.
However you define trust, for leaders, it’s essential. A culture of trust starts at the top. That culture of trust adds speed, quality, and resilience to work. Leaders set the tone. What you say and how you act send signals.
That requires work. You can’t just stay at a Holiday Inn Express.
“Be better.”
That’s Brandon Chin’s mantra. For Brandon, fassforward's creative director, it’s a belief. “Be better” is a half-joking chide used with his team to make sure their work is at its best. It’s an outcome the creative team strives toward. And it's simple.
Those two words capture the essence of Carol Dweck’s growth mindset.
Carol Dweck is an author and professor of psychology at Stanford University. Dweck argues that our thinking falls into two camps. A fixed mindset: where people believe their intelligence and talents are innate, and a growth mindset.
You hear evidence of a fixed mindset in our language.
“She’s a born leader.”
“I’m not good at public speaking; it’s just not my thing.”
“He has natural charisma.”
This is rigid thinking, to believe that our intelligence and talents are static and permanent—that little can be done to change our abilities.
The opposite of a fixed mindset is a growth mindset, to believe that you can “be better.”
A growth mindset contains expansive thinking, where we are curious. Where we believe our talents can be developed through application and persistence.
Again, you hear it. You just don’t hear it as much.
“She’s grown into her leadership role.”
“I’m working on my storytelling skills.”
“Charisma takes practice.”
A growth mindset is about learning and can be learned. That learning takes positive reinforcement and practice. That’s what’s behind Brandon’s belief.
Do you have a fixed mindset? Take this quick test.
Developing a growth mindset requires setting your mind to “be better.”
To make that abstract more concrete, here are six practices you can build into your working routine: Fuel change through challenges, view setbacks as comebacks, value effort over ease, learn from criticism and others' success, harness the power of 'yet,' and relish the process more than the result.
View each challenge as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Work with your team to clarify the outcomes you’re working toward. That allows you to pick and set clear goals.
If you don’t know already, learn what kind of challenge people enjoy. Encourage your team to take on new projects or tasks that push their abilities.
For yourself, step to the edge of your comfort zone, not outside it. Outside your comfort zone is a place of paralysis. At the edge is where you learn and grow. Encourage your team to do the same.
Treat setbacks as temporary obstacles, not insurmountable failures.
Establish a routine of post-mortems or after-action reviews. The name doesn’t matter. Get into the collective habit of reviewing how work was done and how it could be improved.
People make mistakes. If you’re going to criticize something, critique a lack of effort instead of a mistake. Foster a team culture that views mistakes as learning opportunities, not failures.
Share stories of success—especially those people who experienced setbacks and used them as an opportunity to learn.
Hard work and persistence are more valuable than innate talent.
You see this over and over again with sports teams. The fairy-tale success stories come from hard work and perseverance rather than a team built around an all-star.
When you bring the team together, talk about and reward effort in the workplace, regardless of the results.
Great leaders teach. Encourage curiosity, continuous learning, and development within your team.
Be transparent about your personal development goals and share your progress with your team to set an example.
See constructive criticism as a source of feedback. View others' success as an inspiration, not a threat.
One of the rituals that Brandon practices with his team is the “Why it’s good” meeting. Picking a topic—web design, copywriting, PowerPoint slides, or games—the group brings outside examples of what they think is “good." Each team member will, in turn, introduce work and talk about “why it’s good.” Others in the team then build on that. This upbeat, constructive criticism reveals patterns of work that everyone can learn from.
These meetings foster a culture of constructive criticism within your team, where everyone feels safe to give and receive feedback. But don’t just seek feedback; filter it.
What’s more important than seeking feedback? How you listen to it.
Remember Henry Ford, when building the first mass-produced cars, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” There is some debate as to whether Ford said that, but the point stands—feedback is useful—to a point.
Use it to “be better.”
Don't say, "I can't do it." Say instead, "I can't do it yet."
This is the stubbornness of a growth mindset. It’s the recognition that what you do is learned, and you can learn from anywhere.
“Yet” is the ability to think differently, to look for and recognize patterns.
“Yet” is building those patterns into your work. It could be a better way of running a meeting, or making a decision, or navigating the internal politics around a project. It could be the way you produce a report or a PowerPoint.
Then, make those patterns habitual to the team. Make it a collective habit, the way you do things. It’s part of getting faster and battling bureaucracy.
Strive for the outcome, but enjoy the process.
This is, perhaps, the ultimate expression of a growth mindset. It’s building a rhythm the team can sustain—one of constant improvement.
This is where we get to what I will call The Sean Doctrine. It’s similar to The Art Doctrine in that it’s a piece of advice learned from a client. They are the best ones. It’s a smart, simple way to be better.
Sean Barry is the Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Allstate. He does something profoundly simple at his weekly team meeting. He asks a question.
“What’s better this week than last week?”
Those seven words capture Dweck’s work on a growth mindset. They are a gateway to “be better.” As the team answers, the language of the question and the answer communicates continuous improvement. It allows autonomy. Sean is not saying how to be better. His team has the agency to figure that out.
It’s a constant rhythm.
Knowing that question comes up every week means the team can celebrate small wins and progress, not just the final result. It encourages learning and reflection, not just execution.
Like all good questions, it has a follow-up.
“Who is happier, as a result?”
This is a focus on the client or customer. It’s a nod to leadership as a service. It’s knowing that your team—whatever it does—is part of a greater whole.
How do you get to be better?
A baker’s dozen of articles on storytelling and leadership from the first half of 2023.
If you haven’t signed up for the forward-thinking newsletter, please do.
If you have, thank you, and would you like to forward it to a friend?
Gavin
🎬 Ready, set, go.
How do you start your hashtag#story? Here’s a useful guide on how to begin.
Set your hook.
hashtag#storytelling hashtag#communicationskills hashtag#storytellingtraining hashtag#forwardthinking
💼🛡️👑🐉⚔️ Business is just stories.
Those stories help you build stuff and sell stuff. Understand these four genres of business storytelling.
The brand story, the product story, the sales story, and the leadership story.
hashtag#storytelling hashtag#communicationskills hashtag#storytellingtraining hashtag#forwardthinking
1010010001000111 01000100011110100010111111111101101
101THE101GREATEST101DATA101STORY101EVER101TOLD101
1110011101000111 01000101010010100010110000011101100
hashtag#storytelling hashtag#communicationskills hashtag#storytellingtraining hashtag#forwardthinking
🔁 REPETITION 🔁 REPETITION 🔁 REPETITION
Message discipline drives operational discipline in your organization.
Use it to transform your business.
hashtag#storytelling hashtag#communicationskills hashtag#storytellingtraining hashtag#forwardthinking
😌 Once more, with feeling. 🤗
How do you turn your “Narrative” into a hashtag#story?
Time to get cuddly.
hashtag#storytelling hashtag#communicationskills hashtag#storytellingtraining hashtag#forwardthinking
Concrete language is:
Easier to understand.
More Memorable.
More Engaging.
More Credible.
So why wouldn’t you?
hashtag#storytelling hashtag#communicationskills hashtag#storytellingtraining hashtag#forwardthinking
💣Why does your strategy have no traction?
💭Because you haven’t connected the dots with a strategic narrative.
hashtag#storytelling hashtag#communicationskills hashtag#storytellingtraining hashtag#forwardthinking
⛔ Let me check with my boss. ⛔ That’s against policy. ⛔ Due to unforeseen circumstances. ⛔ Please submit a comprehensive report. ⛔ Let's touch base offline. ⛔ I know this is a bit of an eye-chart.
hashtag#storytelling hashtag#communicationskills hashtag#storytellingtraining hashtag#forwardthinking
The law of improving communication: pay attention to what you pay attention to.
hashtag#storytelling hashtag#communicationskills hashtag#storytellingtraining hashtag#forwardthinking
💗 Digital dexterity 💗 Social snacking 💗 Digital lingering 💗 Soft vacation. WordHacks.
hashtag#storytelling hashtag#communicationskills hashtag#storytellingtraining hashtag#forwardthinking
If you have to have another meeting, can you please make it interesting? Or if not interesting, useful?
hashtag#leadership hashtag#meetings hashtag#forwardthinking
Four stories to celebrate the 4th of July. All built around the humble hamburger.
hashtag#storytelling hashtag#communicationskills hashtag#innovation hashtag#forwardthinking
Consider framing as you munch on your burger on the 4th of July.
Not the burger itself. The meaning behind it.
You might think of its Americaness, of flags and fireworks, of motherhood and apple pie. The humble burger as a representative of the very American values of commercialism, entrepreneurship, and capitalism. The flavor of the burger, with its dance partners of lettuce, tomato, and sesame seed. Or even the word “burger” that makes your mouth water on independence day.
Apologies to the non-US readers of this Article. Over here, the holiday is a big thing.
Framing is essential to leadership. It is the essence of storytelling.
Framing is the concept in communication theory and social sciences that refers to how we portray information, events, and ideas. The framing effect is a cognitive bias that helps us choose. And leadership is a choice. Storytelling is how we amplify those choices.No alt text provided for this imageAnd the burger has been framed.
And the burger has been framed.
Gaius's stomach growled as he trudged through crowded streets. The city is alive and bustling; merchants hawking wares, children playing, and citizens about their daily business.
The smell of cooking drew Gaius to the thermopolia. The shop owner greeted him, standing behind a counter of dolia—large terracotta jars filled with different kinds of food.
"Isicia Omentata, sodes" Gaius handed over a few sestertii and munched into his Isicia Omentata as he turned for home.
The thermopolia of ancient Rome were what we would call fast-food stalls today—the precursor to McDonalds. Sestertii were a lower denomination bronze coin worth less than a denarius, a silver coin—the equivalent to modern-day cents and dollars. A common laborer might earn a few denarii for a day’s work, and a dish like Isicia Omentata would likely cost less than a denarius.
Isicia Omentata was a spicy grilled meat patty, the forerunner of the hamburger.
If you need a movie to watch on the 4th of July, watch this one.
Michael Keaton stars in The Founder as Ray Kroc, the American entrepreneur. The story is an object lesson in the cornerstones of capitalism; persistence, ethics, ambition, and innovation.
It is the story of McDonald’s.
As the movie starts, Kroc is a struggling Multimix milk-shake machine salesman. His job and workaholic nature mean a distant relationship with his wife. Kroc’s travels take him to San Bernardino, California, where he meets Mac and Dick McDonald—owners and founders of McDonald’s.
The McDonald brothers' burger tasted great, but their true innovation was the "Speedee Service System," an orchestrated ballet of efficient hamburger production. That system revolutionized the fast food industry.
On a handshake deal, Kroc partnered with the brothers to expand and franchise the business. His first restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, proved a runaway success, allowing him to bring in more investors and open more franchises.
But Kroc felt he wasn’t earning enough.
Kroc worked around his contract with the brothers. He incorporated a new company, Franchise Reality Corporation, which bought and leased the real estate each McDonald’s sat on. After the speedy service system, the land-lease model was the second foundational innovation in McDonald’s history.
Land-lease was a piece of strategic genius.
The Franchise Reality Corporation was also the chess piece that allowed Kroc to force out the McDonald brothers. Land-lease gave Kroc a second, stable, high-profit income. He could collect rent from the franchisees as well as the franchise fee and percentage of sales. This gave him more control over the operators. He wasn’t just the franchisee; he was their landlord.
Kroc's original agreement with the McDonald brothers gave him the right to franchise McDonald's but also gave the brothers a degree of control over the operation, which led to conflict. In 1961, Kroc bought the McDonald's brand and operation rights from the McDonald brothers for $2.7 million. This deal allowed Kroc to take complete control.
Part of the buyout was a verbal agreement to pay the McDonald brothers a 0.5% royalty on future profits.
Kroc, now framing himself as the founder of McDonald’s, opened a new restaurant in San Bernardino, close to the original McDonald’s store. Kroc forced the brothers to rename their store. The newly monikered “The Big M” ultimately closed.
The McDonald brothers never saw their royalties, which would have eventually been about $100 million a year.
Probably not. But maybe you have eaten lean, finely textured beef.
AKA boneless lean beef trimmings. It’s a food product made from the processed offcuts of meat packing plants. Heated, spun in a centrifuge, and then treated with ammonia gas to kill off nasty bugs, it’s used as a filler to reduce beef’s overall fat content—and price.
Critics call it pink slime.
If you’ve had a Big Mac or two in your lifetime, you’ve eaten it. Although it’s safe, according to the USDA, McDonald’s stopped putting it in their burgers in 2012, probably because it doesn’t sound too appetizing.
It’s all in the name.
That’s the beef the Cattleman’s Association has with Beyond Burger. The patty is from California-based startup Beyond Meat; the plant-based burger looks, cooks, and tastes like traditional beef burgers. Except it’s never seen a cow. The Beyond Burger derives from beans and rice.
To consumers, the compound noun of Beyond Burger quickly conveys meaning. It’s like real meat, but not. That wordhackery skates too close to the edge for cattlemen. They insist it’s fake meat, and they’re ornery about it. To date, the debate rages in law courts and state houses.
McDonald’s, sensibly, has avoided that particular fire with the McPlant.™
That quintessential Roman American invention, the hamburger.
The legend of its creation dates back to 1885 at the Outgamie County Fair in Seymour, Wisconsin. Fifteen-year-old Charlie Nagreen flattened meatballs he was selling between two pieces of bread to make them easier to eat. Or—it was first served at Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1900 to allow a customer to eat on the go. That’s another claim.
Also in the mix is Fletcher Davis at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. He ran out of pork for his sausage patty sandwiches and instead used ground beef, probably delighting any visiting cattlemen.
The name itself originates 4,516 miles from St. Louis, Missouri. Hamburg, Germany. Hamburger. Hamburgian immigrants, who enjoyed finely chopped beef in their homeland, found it used in this oh-so-American delicacy.
Snack on that as you eat your burger.
Many years ago, I worked at Gartner.
It was a time of transformation. We were on the cusp of becoming a billion-dollar business. Technology was transitioning from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. An old CEO was stepping down, and a new one was stepping up.
Consultants were brought in.
If you’re thinking McKinsey, Bain, or BCG—you wouldn’t be far wrong. During this time, I learned the importance of other c’s that go with change: clarity, conviction, communication, and certainty (among others) and how much humans need them.
Week after week, the consultants sat in conference rooms.
Paper privacy screens hung on the windows, and a trail of people visited these rooms for interviews. I had my turn, telling of my corner of the business, where it was going, and how it could be improved. Others trailed in after me. I returned for “follow-ups.”
The interviews ground on.
In place of any real communication, the rumor mill whirred. We were merging with another company. A radical reorganization was about to happen. Cuts were about to happen. Products would sunset, and new groups would spin up. Everyone—and no one—knew.
In this communication gap, I noticed three distinct reactions among my colleagues.
That was the first reaction. “Why would we make a decision if everything would change in a matter of weeks? We’re paying consultants millions, and they know best. Pointless to make a decision today that will be reversed tomorrow. Let’s just defer that and hold off on this.”
The next reaction?
In an age of open-plan offices and working from home, this second reaction seems quaint. But it’s a legitimate human reaction to uncertainty—fear. “Not only will I make no decisions, but I won’t rock any boats, make any false moves, or take any action at all. If heads may roll, I want to make sure mine isn’t one of them.”
This is the most dangerous reaction of all. Worse than delay or inaction is action in a hundred different directions. That’s what happens when people think they’re so smart they already know what the strategy is or should be, so they just act as if.
This is the camp I was in.
With uncertainty, we need to tell stories to give people clarity. We need to have message discipline—to repeat those stories until they bed in and help people navigate through change. Consistency. And they need to be true stories, not fairy tales. Certainty.
This is a little like parenting. When you take your kids on a trip, they want to know why. They want to know, “Are we there yet?” They have questions.
A lot of questions.
Except employees are definitely not kids. And I wouldn’t recommend infantilization as a leadership strategy. But the messaging needs are similar. The answer lies in story.
These questions—and the stories that answer them, help people navigate. They help people understand their role. The answers give people confidence. They see their place in the world.
The questions are:
This story fronts your strategy.
People need to know where and why; otherwise, they won’t go with you. In the second world war, Patton answered that question with clarity and certainty. He famously said,
"Berlin. I'm going to personally shoot that paper-hangin' sonofabitch."
One of the best examples of a “where” was from JFK. For America and for NASA, it was the moon. The “why?” Because it is hard.
“But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
The Where and Why define a vision and shared purpose, one that everyone can get behind.
Do you have a where and why story?
Who am I? isn’t just an existential question for a mid-life crisis.
Self-identity is as critical to organizations as the people in them. For individuals, that social connection identifies their tribe. Identity guides actions and decisions in times of change. It aids clarity. Self-identity helps us work with others; it allows us to be autonomous, navigate tasks, and find our place in the world. The same applies to business.
Without a strong self-identity, businesses flounder and fail.
Kodak could not shift its core identity. Despite inventing the digital camera in 1975, “digital” was not part of the company’s identity. Film was. Steve Sasson, the Kodak engineer who invented the technology, couldn’t get anyone to identify with it. It wasn’t who they were.
“But it was filmless photography, so management’s reaction was, ‘that’s cute—but don’t tell anyone about it.”
That was a Kodak moment for the company.
As you tell the story of “who we are,” people have to see themselves in that picture.
This story guides the work. It allows coordination and collaboration.
An old Superbowl commercial gave life to the expression, herding cats. In the spot, a grizzled cowboy faced the camera over a swelling western soundtrack. A herd of cats roaming a dusty plain, being wrangled by ‘catboys.’ The grizzled cowboy husked;
Anybody can herd cattle. Holding together 10,000 half-wild short-hairs, why that’s another thing altogether.
There’s certainty and pride in knowing what you do well.
The story that answers the question, “What do I do?” reduces role ambiguity and lines everyday activity up against strategy and tactics. A clear understanding of “what do I do” deepens autonomy, allowing people to remove transactions and busywork.
This is a question of understanding the business.
In any business, there are organizations — engineering, product, and sales—that make and sell the stuff customers buy. And there are executive functions—HR, finance, and legal—that help the business.
It’s the “how” that’s key.
Both are vital, and both need to understand how the business makes money. Telling these stories allows autonomy. It allows teams to focus on vital improvements that can improve revenue, increase margins and avoid waste.
An employee’s increased financial understanding builds on other stories: where we are going, why, the identity of the business, and my role.
The “How do we make money?” story allows everyone — from the C-suite to the frontline — to make business-savvy decisions.
These cultural stories tell of how we work.
These cultural stories are more powerful than a manifesto. They resonate more deeply than a set of values inscribed on a wall. They shape how people behave. What is more effective? A poster with the word ‘teamwork’ on it or the story of how the team rallied together in a crunch to deliver for a client?
Simply put, culture is “how we do things around here.” Underneath that are the collective habits and unwritten rules that inform the way work gets done. Are people running from one meeting to the next with no time in between? That’s a habit. Do you say yes to the boss, even when it doesn't make sense? That’s an unwritten rule.
Neither of them is good.
Stories shape behavior. These collective habits and unwritten rules help groups do (or not do) things together. They must be shaped. The positive ones reinforced, and the negative ones weeded out.
This is the feedback loop.
The story that emerges from this question tells the truth, or the lie, to all previous stories. It’s the story that tells people where they are. We’re moving the project forward. The transformation is underway. We’re doing something, declaring victory, and moving on.
This is the affirmation that we—the team, the project, the business—are moving forward.
This is a story from the future.
It’s a story that creates the future. It could be a product story or a story of change. It paints a vivid picture of a new product, solution, or business transformation.
“How will this be used?” is a science fiction, a story of the near future. The story explains how your protagonist (customer/ user) and product (solution) come together to solve a problem. This is the story that helps product, engineering, and project teams build what they are building, and sales and marketing teams sell what they are selling.
This “How will this be used?” story is studded with rich detail that shows the value or benefits that you will provide.
Are you telling a story of the future?
These are stories that you should be telling. Are you?
TL~DR: Topic-laced agenda; bad. Outcome-driven agenda; good.
Many of you have weekly staff meetings. Or perhaps, in an attempt to modernize them, these meetings go by another name—check-ins, stand-ups, sync-ups, or huddles.
Whatever they are called, you need them.
The meetings help you manage. Done well, they help with the big three goals of work—engagement (people are enthused about the work), alignment (the team has shared context around the work), and productivity (the work is efficiently and effectively completed).
You might even actually do work in these meetings.
But those same meetings are usually too long, not as effective as they could be, and a big time-suck. And there isn’t just one of them. You run your own, and you probably sit in a dozen others.
You’ve tried a few ideas to mitigate the murder of meetings.
What else can you do?
An agenda full of topics will inflate like a terrified puffer fish.
The problem is the way people treat that topic as a line item on the agenda. On the agenda is something called “Workstream 2 update.” (Yours might be called something else.) You intend that line as an item for discussion, information, presentation, or review.
And so, on the agenda: Workstream 2 update. You assign it to the team lead on Workstream 2. You allot fifteen minutes. The meeting happens.
Fifty minutes in, you wonder: Why is Workstream 2 update so bad? You sneak a glance at your phone. Your mind wanders. The speaker drones on. Is it bad because you’ve already sat through Workstream 1 update? Is it bad because this week’s update is the twin of last week’s? Or is it bad because you know there are four more workstream updates to go?
What happened here?
A topic-driven agenda isn’t a meeting; it’s an information dump.
Spend a little time upfront to make the meeting work.
People want to know why they are there.
Be clear—and singular—on your purpose; whether it’s to coordinate, prioritize, run the business, shape the culture, learn, or create something.
Purpose: alignment.
These allow teams to quickly get a sense of all the moving parts. See who is doing what, and ask for help if they need it. They answer two questions, what did you do? And what are you doing? Coordination meetings and stand-ups work best in short intervals and are best kept short. You run them daily before work starts, or weekly at the beginning of the week, or some cadence in between.
At fassforward, we call them "Task" meetings because they are all about the work.
Participants would identify roadblocks, ask for help, or gain clarity on who is responsible for what.
Outcome: shared understanding, promoting effective communication and efficient collaboration among team members
Purpose: alignment.
Prioritization meetings are about making decisions, particularly about what work to slow down, what to speed up, and what work to tackle next.
Simple prioritizing rules help guide decision-making. For example, if client deliverables drive work, working to agreed dates drives prioritization and alignment of resources. Conversely, a project plan or major business initiatives might drive the prioritization decisions. The cadence for these is typically longer than a coordination meeting, monthly rather than weekly, or weekly rather than daily, as prioritization is at a more macro level.
At fassforward, we call them "roadmap" meetings because they are all about the path of the work.
Outcome: a shared understanding of priorities, optimized resource allocation, and a roadmap for effective execution.
Purpose: productivity and alignment.
The snarkier name might be “follow the money” meetings; they form the core of your team's commercial activity. As such, they’re wide-ranging: discussions related to operational updates, financial reviews, strategic planning, and addressing organizational challenges. These meetings are crucial for effectively running day-to-day operations
For a sales team, these meetings might revolve around reviewing the sales pipeline, discussing prospects, and discussing ways to boost revenue. An engineering team might review and evaluate customer reviews feedback and align product development with customer needs. In the case of an HR team, these meetings could cover topics such as talent acquisition, employee retention, and organizational development. Similarly, for a finance team, discussions might encompass budgeting, financial analysis, and resource allocation.
Outcome: improved commercial performance, alignment with strategic objectives, and the ability to overcome operational hurdles.
Purpose: engagement.
Culture meetings build social connections in and across the team. They can often be part of, or attached to, other meetings. These meetings focus on activities such as recognition, rewards, celebrations, and acknowledging important milestones like birthdays. They are typically agenda-less, allowing for a more informal and interactive approach.
Organizing effective culture meetings can be difficult, as engagement is in the eye of the beholder. It’s easy to cross the line into something performative. Some team members might thrive on public recognition, while others may appreciate more personal gestures or meaningful touchpoints.
At fassforward, we call them "Touch" meetings because they are all about relationship.
Outcome: increased motivation, improved team morale, and a sense of belonging among team members.
Purpose: engagement and productivity.
Learning meetings build business capability. They improve things. They aren’t training; they are the application of learning to improve both the work and how we work. They take advantage of the concept that learning is social.
The primary goal of learning meetings is to encourage team members to expand their knowledge, acquire new skills, and stay up to date. These meetings create opportunities for sharing expertise, conducting training sessions, and discussing best practices. They are part of a culture of continuous learning, contributing to the growth and development of individuals and the team as a whole.
Outcome: better (changed) business practices and work outputs, increasingly capable team members.
Purpose: alignment, engagement, and productivity
Creative meetings build things. That could mean a focus on generating ideas, kickstarting projects, planning, brainstorming—anything aimed at building innovative solutions or driving creative endeavors.
Creative meetings harness the collective creativity and expertise of team members. They serve as a platform to kick-start projects, set direction, and align the team's efforts. By providing a space for open discussions and idea generation, creative meetings encourage active participation and collaboration among team members.
They’re used to re-invent, crack difficult problems, or align the business (or part of the business) in a new direction. These creative meetings could be big or small, formal or informal, frequent or infrequent.
Outcome: a shared vision, increased engagement, and the generation of innovative solutions, ultimately driving successful project outcomes.
Know why. Why you are having the meeting in the first place, and work to an outcome. Be clear on that outcome. Use the meeting types here as a starting point.
Answer questions—not just in the meeting but for the meeting. Build your agenda not as a series of topics but as a set of questions to be answered.
Sum up. The ratio of how much is said in a meeting vs. what is written down is incredibly bad. So many great ideas are glossed over or lost in the ether.
End early. It doesn’t matter how great the meeting is. It’s better if it ends early.
A long time ago, in our galaxy...
George Lucas sat down to write Star Wars. It was a different time. An analog world. The 1970s. Oil shocks, cold war, flared trousers. Apollo missions went to the moon. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey portrayed mankind’s early exploration of our solar system.
And a young George Lucas typed.
Lucas had a guide. Joseph Campbell, literary professor. Years earlier, Campbell had published "The Hero with a Thousand Faces," an exploration of the monomyth. The monomyth, or hero’s journey, Campbell argued, was found over and over again in legend, myth, and story—it represented a profound aspect of the human experience.
The hero’s journey was a repeated pattern.
In a word, no.
It’s too complicated. As a structure to build a strategic narrative, marketing campaign, or sales presentation, it’s literally useless. Try to match your yearly kick-off to a supernatural aid or atonement of the father, and you will soon be reaching for Advil.
But there are lessons to be learned.
Your story isn’t a story without a hero and a villain. In your next presentation, pitch, or high-stakes conversation, your audience has to identify with both. You are not the hero. Your product isn’t the hero. Your idea isn’t the hero. The audience is.
When you watched Star Wars, don’t forget you weren’t up on the big screen, but remember that you identified with the characters on it.
Too many meetings just have a set of topics. Emails just contain information. Where’s the outcome? What are we expected to do with it?
In the hero’s journey, the protagonist receives a call to action. It motivates them. It’s the inciting incident. In your business story, emphasize the call to action—both as the problem you’re trying to solve and the outcome you’re taking people to. The call creates a sense of urgency and relevance for your audience.
I know we don’t like to talk about them.
Business is about change. Leadership is about choice. That means that not everything is an “opportunity.” Some “opportunities” really are actually problems to solve, things to fix, and situations to improve. Acknowledge them, just like real people.
Life has ups and downs. So should your business stories.
The hero’s journey is about the transformation of the hero.
In the end, after the supernatural aid, crossing the threshold, trials and tribulations, and the innermost cave, the hero becomes better. We all want the same. We just don’t want to go through the same hassle. We instinctively prefer the promise of a get-rich-quick scheme or a pill to make it all go away.
But we also know that’s not real.
Your business story has to project the transformation. It has to show the journey, where the hero becomes a better version of themselves, with just a hint of trial or tribulation to make it seem worth it
It’s a story. Therefore emotion. A business story wraps emotion around information. It’s the “feel” that makes people connect.
Star Wars had a great hook. It grabbed attention from the beginning and didn’t let go. That’s the lesson Lucas learned best and the lesson for you. Whether it’s a comment in a meeting, an opening to a conversation, or the beginning of a pitch, you want to set your hook.
Choose zesty words, not sterile ones.
This is the rhetorical sleight of hand that buries earworms in your head. The attention-grabbing word-play that packages your point of view. The linguistic trickery that plants a thought in your mind.
You hear word hacks all the time as they slip into your consciousness.
You sit, sipping an oat-milk, pumpkin-spice latte. Doomscrolling through headlines of “Prompt engineering could be the hottest job in tech, with a paycheck to match.” “Kim Kardashian, Sponcon, and the Rules of Being an Influencer” and “A polarized US hurtles toward a fiscal cliff.” Your phone pings. A friend texts, lamenting the shoepidity of their latest purchase. You sip again and wonder if you should trade that smartphone in for a dumbphone.
Note: For fun, I’ve used a lot of word hacks. They are in italics. Definitions here.
These made-up words work because we’re not used to them. They trip off the tongue and sound interesting to the listener. They work on the brain, telling it to “sit up, switch off autopilot, and translate this.”
We’re wired for novelty. A hit of dopamine seeps into the mind as the pattern is disrupted, and we seek to successfully understand each new word. More gray matter lights up.
The prefrontal cortex, involved in attention and working memory, kicks in. It helps us keep the new word in mind long enough to understand it in context and to learn its meaning.
The hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with memory and learning, gets involved in processing the new word, working to integrate it with our existing knowledge and store it in our long-term memory.
All that brain activity sifts signal from noise. It helps the story stick.
Making up new words (that’s neologisms for the wordanistas out there) isn’t a cyberspace invention. Although the Internet does seem to spawn more than its fair share. Literature has given us Scrooges, Polyannas, and Snarks. Science and technology have given us lidar, Google, and Photoshop.
Why do we do it? So people can grok what you’re talking about.
Neologism. A new word.
They come, often, in two forms. The portmanteau—think of two words slammed together to form a new one, with the edges shorn off. Metaverse or Affluenza. Then we have compound nouns. These are wordhacks made from two words standing side by side. Think digital dexterity or zoom ceiling.
Used sparingly by clever speakers, writers, and educators, the wordhack screams, “Look at me, listen, pay attention.” The best ones are not only unusual but have enough familiar parts to make them understandable and memorable.
Let’s start with a few simple portmanteaus.
There are some near-universal endings to add. Adding a “-y” turns a name into an adjective. So, for example, we might want to transition the business to be more SaaSy, meaning we need to take on the attributes of a successful Software as a Service business.
Or we can “-ify” things. If we Amazonify something, it takes on aspects of Amazon. Depending on context, that means a relentless focus on operational excellence or innovation or getting a product ready for e-commerce.
Let’s turn it up a notch.
An “-athon” implies a long, intense process. “We’re going to figure out how to build AI into our work processes in a hackathon.” Or “Boy, Julie’s offsite was a real meetathon.”
Add an “-ology” or “-omics” if you want to give something or someone some extra IQ points. “We need to understand the buyology of our customers.” “Jim’s leading our RTO effort; he has a master's in deskology.” “We’ve hired a consultant to help with our internal communications; she will help clean up our jargonomics.”
The tech industry, and by extension, consulting, and by extension, every company using technology, loves its “-ications;” the conversion from one state to a future, better state. Think gamification, tokenization, digitization, and virtualization.
The list goes on. Add an “-Ops” to a word and hint at an operationalized, automated, streamlined, better version of that word. DevOps, GitOps, and TeamOps.
Want to turn a noun into a tasty adjective? Try “-alicious.”
Runs some type of code, use “-ware.” Software, malware, and wetware.
Noodle with “-preneur” (solopreneur, intrapreneur), “-cast”(podcast, webcast, narrowcast), and “tech” (Fintech, Edtech, Agtech)
First, pick a modifier. Digital, Data, Social, or AI will do. Stand a base word next to it. The thing that Digital or AI modifies. Think dexterity, debt, snacking, and washing.
Mix them together, and what have you got?
Digital dexterity—the ability for organizations and employees to pivot quickly using digital tools.
Data debt—the build-up of data-related problems over time, including quality, categorization, and security issues.
Social snacking—brief, informal, positive interactions which contribute to a sense of happiness, belonging, and identity.
AI washing—the marketing claim of artificial intelligence (AI) technology when they really don't or the connection to AI is minimal.
Or just stick the word digital in front of a bunch of other modifiers: Nomad, footprint, divide, first, or hub.
Digital nomads—people who travel freely while working remotely using technology and the internet.
Digital footprint—some or all of the actions left as you use and interact with various technical systems.
Digital divide—the gulf between those who have ready access to computers and the internet and those who do not.
The list goes on, but I won’t.
Once you have your wordhack, it’s time to use it. But shed it as soon as it becomes cliché.
Coinage: This is the stage where a new word, phrase, or idiom is created and introduced into the language. This could be due to cultural trends, specific contexts, or an individual's invention.
Fad: The hot stage, where the word, phrase, or idiom gains temporary popularity and becomes a trend. It captures the interest and enthusiasm of a specific group or community.
Common use: Here, the word, phrase, or idiom is widely accepted. It’s consulting-speak, used in various contexts and beyond a fad.
Stale: The word, phrase, or idiom is overused, predictable, and lacking freshness.
cliché: At this final stage, the word, phrase, or idiom becomes worn out. It lacks punch. It’s trite due to its pervasive and unoriginal usage.
Great storytellers do this. They will drop in a new word or a term of art as a nod to the in-crowd. Subtly signaling, “I am one of you; I know my stuff.” But they aren’t exclusive. They surround the new word with simple language, enough to welcome new members to the club.
Beware—a blizzard of brand-new (as you will appreciate if you have made it here) is too much. It will overwhelm your story. But just enough novelty cracks the code for attention.
The trick is to remove the clichés, sprinkle in one or two wordhacks (for novelty and attention) and aim for simple.
When was the last time you simply talked to someone and walked away feeling lighter, smarter, energized? It’s a wonderful feeling when it all goes right.
However, simply having a conversation isn’t always that easy. Conversations are layered. They come with preoconceived notions or worldviews. They come with tones, attitudes, and differing points of view.
Fassforward is all about having meaningful conversations, it’s in the lifeblood of what we’re built on. So when we heard it was National Conversation Week, we wanted to be a part of that conversation. We tapped our expert coaches to get their advice on the top challenges they hear from their clients.
In celebration of National Conversation Week and in support of Executive Coaching Month, we proudly present another compilation of invaluable "how-to's" to help you feel lighter, smarter, energized.
Dave: How to recharge & avoid burnout.
It starts with recognition that you need to move yourself up on your priority list.
Almost everyone I coach has their job and their families as their top 2 priorities. They are a distant 3rd (sometimes 4th behind the pet). The key to recharging and avoiding burnout is self-care. Carve out time for whatever you do to de-stress (exercise, meditation, etc.). Put “focus time” on your calendar so you have time to think and ideate and not just check boxes on your “To Do” list.
Encourage and demonstrate these habits to your team, so they follow your lead.
Sheri: How to find/reignite passion in what you do.
Many individuals, including my clients, often reach a point in their career where they feel unfulfilled and disillusioned.
They may have excelled in their roles and met new challenges, but the passion and energy they once had for their work has dwindled. It's not uncommon to question whether they want to continue on this path or if it's worth it. This is where finding purpose can make a significant difference. As an executive advisor and coach, I use a process called Life Crafting to help clients uncover the small seeds of purpose that exists in anything they do.
Jill: How to say no without saying no.
Many of the people I work with have an “automatic yes.” They take on too much work and wind up doing too much. Eventually, they either burnout, resentment sets in, or they just leave. Priority-setting works, until someone else’s priority shoves yours out of the way.
Learn how to say no, without saying no. “Of course I can deliver that. Which one of the previous priorities can I put on hold?” “I can get that done by this date, unless you want to speak to so and so and change their timeline.” “I can get it to you by (date), however if you assign more resources I can get it to you by the date you requested.” It’s always harder to have “the not no” conversation, but in the long run you’ll be better off, get everything done, enlist help and satisfy everyone, including yourself.
After all is said and done though, sometimes you do just have to say no.
Frank: How to maximize your coaching experience.
Congratulations! You’ve been identified as a high potential employee.
Are you ready to invest time and energy in your professional development? That’s code for are you ready to do the work?
If you want to ensure time well spent with your executive coach, set the agenda for your call. Sharing your goals and priorities ensures your time together is productive. It also helps shape a development plan tailored to your needs.
Practice what you’ve learned. Give your executive coach feedback on what’s working and what isn’t. Be willing to step out of your comfort zone and take some risks.
A successful engagement is a routine of practice and feedback.
Christian: How to show up how you want to show up.
Start with a simple question: “How do you want to show up?”
First, get complete clarity about how you want to show up. Create a blueprint around how you need to act if you want to hit your goals.
Then start tracking how you show up. Practice showing up in the manner that you want and see when you hit the target.
Like any other skill, practice, repetition, and reflection transform you into the person you want to become.
Rose: How to have conversations that change hearts and minds.
There's a conversation we are having with ourselves. Often that translates to a conversation that tells us we’re not enough.
That’s the first conversation we need to change. Each of us comes into this world with our brilliance and our muddy shoes. We need to accept our imperfections as what makes us uniquely us.
There is also a conversation going on that is not taking us in the right direction. Making ourselves vulnerable in front of others begins to change that conversation.
It starts with being human, sharing openly, and allowing others to do the same; without judgment or immediately pushing our point of view. Listening attentively and objectively opens the conversation. It allows for a sharing of perspectives and opinions that can lead to finding common ground.
When we move from obsessing over the conflict to finding the compliment, we humanize the conversation.
Gavin: How to use questions to boost your executive presence.
Executives underestimate the power of questions.
Questions are a clarifying, confidence-building, credibility-inducing, curiosity-triggering, communications superpower.
Used well, they are a “how” that unlocks gravitas and adds presence. Questions set up stories. Socratic questions help leaders teach. Pointed questions solve thorny business problems. Rhetorical questions connect and grab attention. Questions both align and empower.
A caution, though.
Beware the “drill-down”—where questions feel like an inquisition. Or questions that “over-couch”—a poor disguise to a blunt statement. “Have you thought about...”
Are questions in your quiver?
Shannon: How to professionally elevate your LinkedIn presence.
Welcome to LinkedIn. There's more to it than meets the eye. If you present yourself correctly, you'll be able to unlock its full potential and elevate your career.
LinkedIn has over 700 million users. Those users are on LinkedIn for a specific reason. They're looking to professionally connect and create with relatable, like minded people. They're looking for trustworthy thought leaders in their industry and solutions for their business challenges. They're looking for business trendsetters and to be a part of their industry's communities.
But you need more than just a well-crafted profile to stand out. The key to elevating your presence and setting you apart from everyone else, is to be creative, authentic and passionate about what you do. Confidently, showcasing your unique talents and personality goes way beyond setting up the basics. Events. Articles. Newsletters. Influencers. Groups. There are so many opportunities for success if you just step outside of the box.
Large organizations are afflicted with largeness.
Largeness has outsized benefits. Economies of scale, where buying in bulk saves bucks. Or market power, where you are the 800lb gorilla in the room. It allows organizations to diversify, with eggs distributed among multiple baskets and smoothed out revenue flows. Brand recognition comes with largeness, the familiar—and safe—face in a crowded room.
It’s not quite too big to fail, but it’s close.
Largeness brings access to capital—money and investors seek you out, not the other way around. Brand recognition has a halo effect, and talent is attracted to you. For many industries, largeness comes with network effects, a self-reinforcing flywheel as more people buy and use your stuff.
Large is great. But there’s a “but.” Another “B” word.
It’s fear of the dark side that makes big companies want to act small. Jim Gerace, Chief Communications Officer of Verizon, first penned its Credo, a document of Verizon’s culture. It contains a passage designed to keep largeness at bay.
“We know that bigness is not our strength, best is our strength. Bureaucracy is an enemy. We fight every day to stay "small" and keep bureaucracy out.”
Large companies seek an antidote to largeness.
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet, declared a “Simplicity Sprint,” asking employees to think about “how we can minimize distractions and really raise the bar on both product excellence and productivity.”
It’s a constant fight against inertia.
When Michael Miebach became the CEO of Mastercard, he declared “moving fast” as one of the three pillars of the Mastercard way.
But largeness and speed require work.
Largeness, aka big thinking, aka bureaucracy, has roots in optimism.
The Big Gulp-size, Market Power, Brand Recognition, Economies of Scale flavored Kool-aid has been guzzled. Largeness means organizations try to do too much. What would be a quick decision in a small organization is pondered, analyzed, sent up the chain, and considered for input.
Multiple people with hands in multiple pies.
Projects get layered on top of projects. Work expands to occupy time and team. Groupthink expands to even bigger groups. Goals are proudly ambitious. Too much is put on the “to-do” list. As a result, the pace of projects shifts from agile to inexorable.
Sufferers of largeness look on in envy at smaller, nimbler businesses and skunkworks teams who can move things along at a rapid pace.
Why do the gears of business grind so slowly?
Would you cook your next meal without cleaning the counter?
Would you leave pots boiling from lunch while you start to make dinner? Leave pans to soak while you’re washing vegetables in the same sink? You would not, I hope. You would clear the decks. Clean the kitchen. Give yourself some room.
But large organizations don’t do that. They take on too much. It’s difficult to do [the new thing] because we’re still working on the old thing.
Overthinking doesn’t help. That one-page decision-making framework turned into a 40-page user guide. Rules and procedures designed to deal with the main use case, as well as the rainy-day, once in a blue moon, it’ll never happen again use case.
Or the (true story) internal training guide describing a new product. Guide length: sixty-two pages. The opening description of the product on page three: “intuitive and easy-to-use.” 😢
I don’t think they know what intuitive means.
Two words. Neither of which you will like.
Do less.
Start-ups know this. They might want to change the world, but they don’t have world-changing resources. A focus on minimum viable product and outsourcing non-core activities are ways of doing less.
Athletes know this, where rest days and reducing training volume result in performance gains.
Engineers know this. It’s why they apply principles of lean manufacturing, minimizing waste, and continuous improvement.
But when it comes to big business, largeness sets in.
Lean becomes less lean. A previously good idea is enterprised, scaled, and “for large organizations.”
Agile becomes SAFe (scaled agile framework). Growth Hacking morphs into Enterprise Growth Hacking.
If you’re mentally checking the bureaucracy box, thinking perhaps, your team, organization, or business doesn’t move fast enough, look in the mirror.
Here are nine ways you can change your own behavior, guard against the lesser demons of largeness, and hack your—and your team's—productivity.
Flow is a state of mind where you are completely absorbed, and time seems to fly. This leads to increased productivity, creativity, and enjoyment in your work.
To achieve it, set aside time on your calendar. Cut out meetings. Focus on tasks that are challenging but not impossible, with clear goals and deadlines. Eliminate anything that will hijack your brain—open tabs, message alerts, a growling stomach—and other distractions.
Find flow.
Think about how you and your team work.
Now think about how you and your team can work faster. Take time to review workflows, eliminate bottlenecks, and reduce unnecessary steps. Is that meeting necessary? Do you need to review that item? Who can be removed from the process? It may seem tedious, but it will pay off in the long run with increased efficiency and better results.
Execute. Build a routine of Do something-Declare victory and Move on. Push decision-making and autonomy down. Encourage your team to take ownership of their work and trust their judgment. This will increase speed, build agility and boost engagement.
Before you can build patterns, you have to be aware of them.
A pattern isn’t a template. They’re like a dressmaker’s pattern or a cake recipe. Something repeatable that you know leads to a good result. In work, they come in two flavors; patterns that influence behavior and patterns that lead to better output.
A “why it’s good” meeting is a pattern of behavior. You run them as and when needed to look at work. Not to negatively critique the work, but to look at what worked. This is so you can identify a work pattern and repeat it. In fassforward’s design team, we look at work from adjacent disciplines to understand why it’s good and how that can be applied to our own work.
An output pattern could be a standard for how you produce something that will be used in your day-to-day work. It could be a use case, a creative brief, a customer journey, or any number of artifacts. The first time the team builds one or upgrades one, you want to be heavily involved, as it sets the pattern.
Once you have patterns, people know what good looks like and have a recipe to follow.
This is the storytelling, concrete language, and message discipline that every leader, big ‘L’ or little ‘l,’ must practice.
You might set out to be a data-driven organization, but you have to tell stories with data and cut through the noise.
Set goals, yes, but create work around outcomes.
Make those outcomes clear and concrete, yet evergreen. That allows people the autonomy to set their own goals and figure out how to get there. It creates alignment without micro-management and frees creativity without excess oversight.
Outcomes
Goals
Outcomes are something to strive towards. They are clear, concrete, evergreen, and freely shared.
Goals may be F.A.S.T. or S.M.A.R.T, with targets to hit, specific, measurable, and usually timebound.
Put a smile on every customer's face
Increase NPS score by 5 points
Give our employees a reason to want to run to work
Improve to a customer engagement score of 80% or higher
Build minimum lovable products, not minimum viable ones
Bring project Athena to market in Q3.
When they write the book on collaboration, they write about us
Increase the number of cross-functional projects by 50% within the next year
Anchor your team to outcomes. Work together to set and meet goals.
Just like ogres and onions, bureaucracies have layers. People inhabit those layers. People who check-in, see the email before it goes out and weigh in on the PowerPoint slide.
Checking in itself isn’t a bad thing. It’s how it’s done that puts the snarl in largeness. Those people that add to the snarl are auditing. They look for fault as a way to weigh in. “The font is too small.” Or, “Change this word...”
Why are you doing that? (If you do).
If it’s because you’re in the chain of command, and this has to go to your boss, check yourself. You are on the audit committee. If it’s because everyone else has weighed in, so you think you should, too, then stop.
Weigh in to teach people how to do it better, to improve work, and to create patterns. Weigh in because you are helping others do the work, or the work gets done better or faster. If that’s what you do, you are on the translation team.
The team to root for, obviously, is the translation team.
This is where you look at the email, document, or slide and think, “How do I translate that?” or “How do I get my team energized around this?” translation is about making it relevant, interesting, and driving action.
Say no to complicated.
Simple rules are an antidote to a complex world. Donald N. Sull, a Management Professor at MIT, and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, an Engineering Professor at Stanford, introduced the idea in their book of the same name.
Unironically, the idea is simple.
Simple rules are concise, easy-to-follow guidelines that help you make better decisions in complex and uncertain situations. They codify how to act when you come across a known pattern.
The "two pizza rule" is a simple rule popularized by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. If a team can't be fed with two pizzas, it's too big. This rule helps keep teams small, which can improve communication, decision-making, and innovation.
Eat the frog is a rule that dates back to Dwight D. Eisenhower. He didn’t call it that. His rule—do it now—was a politer version of the same thing. Do the difficult work, the work you would like to put off, early in your day while you have the time, creativity, and energy.
Simple rules are a way to translate strategy and shape culture. They make it easy for people to decide what to do.
You have heard a lot about AI.
You will hear more and more in the years to come. Like many of us, I am learning along with you. What I strongly suspect—but don’t know to be true—is this. Experts that learn how to use AI to enhance their work will produce better work and produce it quickly. You are using it in many ways already, from the auto-complete in your text messages, to the fraud detection protecting your bank account.
If you haven’t started figuring out how to bring ChatGPT into your life, start now.
Are you ready to let go of largeness?
We’re not as concrete as we could be. That isn’t good.
When we’re abstract, communication fails.
Failure is expensive. In large companies, the cost of poor communication robs millions of dollars from the bottom line. Strategy confuses instead of clarifies. According to research by The Strategic Agility Project, less than a third of executives and managers can list three of their company’s strategic priorities.
In the absence of clear communication, we do yesterday’s work, not today's. Projects fail. Transformation efforts stall. Change turns to swirl. Engagement dips, and employees leave.
So we try to make “it” clearer. To simplify.
But, in our effort to be simple, we go in the wrong direction. We go for abstract, not concrete.
Trello didn’t burst onto the scene in 2011; it gently materialized.
Joel Spolsky, a co-founder of Fog Creek Software, was there. “It [Trello] started out as a small project, and then it caught on, and more people moved to that team to work on it. When we saw the traction it got internally, we decided to push it public.”
At launch, Trello was announced as “a super simple, web-based team coordination system.”
Spolsky took Trello to TechCrunch Disrupt, an annual gathering of founders, investors, developers, and business people interested in the startup and technology world.
Disrupt is the place for technologists looking for a spotlight.
With a tagline of “Organize everything, together,” Trello placed but didn’t win. At Disrupt, the audience heard about a “team workflow platform and list manager.” Six words strung together that could not be more abstract.
Trello had potential, though.
A tech journalist described it as “easy to grasp (easier than it is to explain), easy to use, instantly shareable.”
(Easier than it is to explain). Ouch.
Even the name—Trello—was abstract. Clever but not clear. “Trello” came from "trellis," the wooden lattice in your garden for climbing plants. Trello's creators wanted the platform to support work, much like its namesake-supported plants.
Three years on, Trello took in its series A funding.
The explanation had evolved—from the abstract, “team workflow platform and list manager,” to the more concrete, “visual to-do lists.”
By the time Trello hit 5 million users, it was a “project and task-management system, functioning like a visual to-do list.”
Topping 7 million users a year later, Trello was “A digital whiteboard; a collaborative task-management software.”
By April 2015, Trello reached 8 million users and was described as a “task management App.”
In 2019, at 50 million users, Atlassian acquired Trello. The move from the abstract (easier to use than to explain) to the concrete coincided with an exponential increase in users and a $425 million acquisition.
It doesn’t help. It leads to chocolate conversations.
To identify abstract, all you have to do is ask, “What does that mean?” The explanation given will quickly move to concrete territory.
For instance, a CFO describes customer churn in basis points.
“We’re experiencing a 7bps increase in our measured churn rate.”
Abstract.
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’re seeing a 0.7% increase in our churn rate month over month.”
Slightly more concrete.
“What does that mean?”
It means we’re losing an average of 10 customers a day.
Concrete.
You hear it everywhere. Economic Value? Abstract. Empowerment? Transformation? Abstract. NPS? Abstract.
Putting a score on it doesn’t make it more concrete. A score quantifies an abstract concept.
This is dual coding theory.
Psychologist Allan Paivio argued that concrete words, which have both verbal and image-based links, are easier to remember and process than abstract words, which primarily have verbal associations.
Think, “put a smile on every customer’s face.” That’s a verbal and image-based association—you can see it in your mind's eye. “Increase our NPS score” means the same thing, but we have to think more and process more.
Our brains interpret concrete language like a clear roadmap.
Abstract language is fuzzier and takes more work, like a set of vague directions. The roadmap gives us specific landmarks and distances. The vague directions, “go north for a bit” and “turn left when you reach the corner,” create confusion.
Over and over again, studies validate concrete language.
We’re more likely to recall what was said. We’re more likely to believe. We’re better able to solve problems. We are more empathetic. We’re more likely to achieve goals, make better decisions, and work together as a team.
The usual reasons. Habit. Our own lack of expertise when faced with a complex subject. Preferring the looseness and ability to fence-sit by making a broad generic statement rather than a specific one.
All understandable but not helpful.
Here are six things you can do today to get more concrete.
The more “you” is used in the sentence, or “we” or “our team,” the more concrete it is. It’s not for the greater good. It’s not for an abstract concept like a brand or an organization.
Go from “Our data protection services protect critical business information” to “with our data protection services, you and your team can protect your critical business information.”
Starting as a column in Men’s Health magazine, "Eat This, Not That!" has become a successful series of books selling millions of copies. It’s a lifestyle brand built around the power of concrete expression.
Do the same for your strategic imperative. Take the fairly ambiguous phrase, “build market-ready capabilities.” You might make that more concrete in a this/ not that way. "This means we will build specific capabilities across the organization—critical thinking, storytelling, change management—but we will not invest in an all-you-can-eat buffet of individual skills training.”
Before and afters don’t just work for Dyson, Weight Watchers, and home improvement shows, they make your initiative more concrete too. It’s the From/To or Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow construct that makes progress palpable.
For a digital transformation, that might look like this:
[Before] Fragmented customer data made it hard to get a complete view of their behavior and preferences.
[After] Centralized customer data provides improved insights, targeted marketing, and higher satisfaction.
You may be as confused by Analogy, Metaphor, and Simile as I am. It doesn’t matter. The point is comparisons make things concrete.
Imagine you’re a product manager trying to explain why you’re making improvements to a user interface. A comparison will come in useful. Even better—to make it concrete by supplying the picture for the mind’s eye.
You might show a picture of one of Concorde’s control panels.
“This is one of eighteen instrument panels of Concorde’s flight deck. An engineering marvel. The first, and to date only, supersonic civilian airliner. As you can see, all the controls are in one place, easy to hand. What you might call a “single pane of glass.”
You can also see that a “single pane of glass” may mean unified, but it doesn’t mean simple. Consolidated doesn’t mean clear.
That’s why we are starting project clarity—to radically revamp our Ux. ”
We’re procrastinators. So we put off important decisions.
We like a bird in the hand, instant gratification, and certain rewards. Two birds in the bush, the prospect of a delayed, maybe greater reward, is fuzzier and in the future. It’s not as appealing.
This is what economists call hyperbolic discounting. It’s the marshmallow test. Would you like a marshmallow now, or will you wait, staring at the marshmallow on your plate, for the prospect of two marshmallows later?
Less than one in five of us will wait.
So why do we talk about grandiose visions and long-term plans without giving people a path to instant gratification?
Former world-class athlete and current CEO Darren Webster used the same kind of concrete thinking in setting goals for the World Championships in sprint kayaking. “The ambition was medalling in the 500M. But that doesn’t work on its own. It’s the process and the daily or weekly goals that keep you moving forward. Completing a series of gym sessions or beating a PB on the water.”
That same type of concrete thinking and short-term goal setting is what Goalster, a goal-setting app that helps people execute, is all about.
The Piraha people live in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil, along the banks of the Maici and Branco Rivers. Their language—Piraha— contains three numbers. “One,” “two,” and “many.”
You might think that strange, but we are not that different.
Despite conceptually understanding zero, infinity, and all the numbers in between, our brains have to work hard to interpret them. Our working memory starts to become overwhelmed after five to nine items.
We lack concrete reference points for large numbers. A $billion? That’s a large number. A $trillion? That's a larger number. A $100 billion? Isn’t that a trillion? No, wait, that’s $1000 billion. Let me check Google.
See what I mean?
If you’re the CFO, and taking people through your numbers, scale them to human size. Instead of “We did $ 1 billion in sales last year,” try, “we did $ 1 billion in sales last year, that’s nearly $ 3 million a day. That’s $ 2,500 per day, per employee.”
Now you can be more concrete. That’s better.
Once upon a time, LEGO’s toy kingdom teetered on collapse.
It was 2003. LEGO faced a net loss of DKK 1.4 billion ($220 million) and was on the verge of bankruptcy. LEGO’s colorful bricks were scattered far and wide (over-diversification). Towers of blocks began to look like Rube Goldberg machines (product complexity). LEGO’s once-loyal subjects wandered, lost in a world of distraction (loss of brand identity).
Enter a new champion. CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp.
Knudstorp introduced a multipart strategic plan. Simplify the product line. Invest in innovation. Improve supply chain and manufacturing efficiency, and rebuild brand identity.
But strategy alone isn’t enough. People had to be moved.
Knudstorp knew this would be challenging. "Innovation is what LEGO is all about, but the company had a tendency to over-innovate. It is not always a good idea to innovate when you have a solid brand."
For strategy to live, ingrained organizational habits must change. "We had become too complex, too inward-looking, too driven by our own agenda rather than being driven by what the customer wanted. The company had lost its focus."
Knudstorp needed a narrative.
"I wouldn't say we were going back to basics, but we were going back to the core idea of what LEGO was about." Knudstorp’s story of the future was grounded in the past. "The brick is our main building block for the future. We need to protect the brick, protect the brand, and protect the people."
With strategy and narrative in place, the kingdom’s fortunes rose.
Under Knudstorp’s leadership, LEGO reduced its product portfolio by more than 50%. The company's revenue grew by more than 600% between 2006 and 2016. By 2017, LEGO became the world's most valuable toy brand, surpassing Mattel and Hasbro.
The narrative helps articulate the need for change.
Take Microsoft’s re-emergence. When Satya Nadella became the CEO of Microsoft, he introduced a new strategic narrative that focused on a "mobile-first, cloud-first" world. This narrative aimed to pivot the company's strategy towards cloud computing, enterprise services, and cross-platform experiences.
The narrative aligns with the organization’s values and purpose.
For Ford, this was a return to its roots. When Alan Mulally became the CEO of Ford, the company was struggling with a complex organizational structure, multiple brands, and a lack of focus on core products. Mulally introduced the "One Ford" strategic narrative, which emphasized unifying the company, streamlining the product portfolio, and focusing on the Ford brand.
The truth is the story we tell. Data is a prop.
Case in point, some widely circulating statistics. The first, “stories are 22 times more memorable than facts alone.” Often attributed to Stanford University marketing professor Jennifer Aaker. Or, when asked to recall speeches, “63 percent remember the stories. Only 5 percent remember any individual statistic.” This is a story cited in Chip and Dan Heath’s thought-provoking book, Made to Stick.
Convincing data of the power of story. Except neither is exactly true. Aaker’s 22 times fact isn’t validated by any research. Heath’s story is exactly that—a story, not a study. But both “facts” are often cited to prove the power of storytelling. Evidence itself that “truth”—what we choose to believe—emerges from story.
A story is a device that persuades.
A strategic narrative is, in fact, a collection of stories.
These stories stand between success and failure. They tell the need for change. People can clearly see the burning platform and the holy grail. The question of “Where are we going, and why?” is answered. A shared context and common language beds in. The strategy is translated from a synonymous word salad to a clear, concrete plan. Buzzwords are jettisoned, acronyms expanded. Heroes and villains come to light. Concerns are spoken of openly and addressed.
It’s a team effort, a journey, a quest.
Your strategic narrative has three acts.
Act I. Clarify the strategy. Building the strategic narrative and the message blocks.
Act II. Go from narrative to story. Curating a collection of stories and equipping an army of storytellers.
Act III. Bring the narrative to life. Socializing, measuring, and stewarding the narrative.
The worst crime of a strategy is that it is ignored.
Your strategy sits in an unaccessed PowerPoint file attached to a string of emails. The strategy had fifty minutes in the sun, lauded by the CEO at an annual kick-off, then everyone went calmly back to their day job.
Why?
It’s too confusing, too complex. No one has connected 30,000 feet to 10 feet. The strategy ignores cultural concerns, resistance to change, and pocket vetoes. Leaders don’t clear away the old work to make way for the new work. The strategy remains the job of one person or department.
To clarify the strategy is to translate the strategy.
That’s everyone’s job. Tease apart the confusing mish-mash of vision, mission, and goal. The why (purpose), where (vision), what (mission), and how (strategy/ plan) of it all. Get clear on what’s in and what’s out. What you will do, what you won’t do. What the end state looks like. Define the outcomes you’re working toward and what behaviors need to change.
End of Act I.
Simply christening your strategy a “narrative” isn’t enough.
You must turn your strategic narrative into a collection of stories. A creative mix of characters, conflict, context, continuity, and conclusion.
Those stories have a specific audience—the heroes of your story. That’s where the T-leaf and Motive triangle come in. The internal heroes—your team, employees, and other stakeholders—are dealing with the villains of change. Loss of control or status, clinging to the past, excess work, worries about our own competence, uncertainty, and surprise all stack up like gremlins.
These are all perceived, yet very real.
The traditional antidote is to show the business hockey stick. A rationalized plan that shows the current state intended actions and then a steady stream of good results on the way to a better future. Planning fallacies and excess optimism kick in. If there is conflict at all, it’s to declare that this will be “challenging” or “difficult.”
This doesn’t seem real. It is perceived as Kool-Aid.
A real story has real ups and downs. So too, your narrative has to embrace highs and lows. Acknowledge the difficulties ahead and the quest your heroes face.
Visual metaphors can help.
To do things differently, people have to see things differently. Literally. More, visuals allow people to see and discuss challenges in detail, without personalization. This is part of our process of developing a narrative—to show a map of change. This shows the strategy and the journey. It includes both where you are and where you are going, the challenges you face, and the new behaviors you want to embrace.
You want people to be able to see themselves in the picture.
Years ago, two well-known marketing agency networks merged. Draft, a leading direct marketing firm, and FCB, a top-tier creative agency. DraftFCB was born. The strategy covered multiple pages of decks and slides. As a way of translating that into a strategic narrative, we created what became known as “the blue board.”
Styled after Keith Haring, the blue board became a totem for the new agency. Blown up and displayed as a ten-foot-high mural in offices around the world, it was the first thing customers (and employees) saw when they entered the building.
On stage at conferences and in town halls around the world, the blue board was a vehicle that carried DraftFCB’s strategic narrative.
Employees, who understood their presentation style; all trained to tell DRAFTFCB’s story and coached in rhetoric and connecting language.
End of Act II.
You might have heard of the legend.
John F. Kennedy (or Lyndon B. Johnson, depending on where you heard the story) is touring NASA headquarters and comes across a Janitor late at night. He asks him what he’s doing. To which the Janitor replies, “I’m not mopping the floors; I’m putting a man on the moon.”
That’s the goal of bringing the narrative to life.
You haven’t finished when your boss has the slides. You are on your way when every employee can see themselves in the picture. They understand how their daily work impacts the overarching mission. External stakeholders see and understand the narrative; the stories they tell add value to the company.
At this point, you don’t really control the narrative.
The strategic narrative is not a script. It’s more like a joke. One that, hopefully, everyone repeats. As people repeat their own version of the joke, the beats in the set-up are the same. The punchline is the same. But how each tells it depends on the context and the audience.
The net effect is that you are socializing the narrative through formal and informal networks. Andreas Hoffbauer, an expert in the social dynamics of organizations, sees strategy fail when we don’t tap into our informal networks. “Sometimes strategies fail because they are bad. But [more often] I see backlash because leaders did not build incremental buy-in, ensuring those most impacted by the change feel like they are part of the real conversation.”
Armies of advocates tell the story of change.
They help translate the abstract concepts of vision, mission, and strategy to the concrete; what am I doing today? How do we behave as a team?
Message discipline stewards the narrative.
This is not just keeping up the drumbeat of communication but ensuring that actions sync with words. This is a challenge for Mastercard. Their strategic narrative, The Mastercard Way, is a definition of how to create value, grow together, and move fast, a “how” as it reshapes its culture. Michael Fraccaro, Chief People Officer of Mastercard, wants to measure and incent that change. He is tying performance reviews and measurement (pulse surveys, etc.) to a scorecard of “what goals and targets people achieve, and how they do it.”
End of Act III.
Your turn. Don’t leave your strategy scattered in PowerPoint like a pile of LEGO bricks.
Build a narrative. Bring it to life.
As an executive coach, I get asked the question, "Can I think bigger and bolder?" The answer is, "yes you can". But not without deliberate practice.
It's like being right-handed or left-handed. Most people hardly consider it. We rarely see a reason to change our dexterity. In leadership however, as in baseball, that inability to do so, leaves us vulnerable.
Using our left-hand, right-hand analogy — roughly 13% of major league baseball players are switch hitters. Their batting averages are markedly different when they go from their dominant side to their less dominant side.
The exception is Chipper Jones. A 19 year Atlanta Braves veteran, he was a rarity amongst switch hitters. Jones posted a batting average of .303 left-handed and .304 batting average from the right side. Contrast that with all-time great, Mickey Mantle. Mantle posted a .330 batting average from his right side and a less than stellar .280 batting average from the left side.
Mantle’s power came from his left side. He claimed the crown of best all-time switch hitter because he hit an insane 369 home runs from the left side. Bear in mind that roughly 76% of active players stick with their dominant side.
What does this have to do with thinking bigger and bolder?
If you apply the same stats to business leadership, 76% of the people I coach have a business-batting average of .300. They’ve learnt to use their dominant side to hit a fastball, curveball, slider, sinker, knuckleball, etc.¹
They’ve learned to deal with ambiguity and complexity. They are good critical thinkers. They use this skill to hit the leadership equivalents of those fastballs, curveballs, knuckleballs, etc.
These leaders have developed muscle memory for how to to solve business problems.
But what if a complex problem doesn’t go away? Or worse, resurfaces after it was thought to be solved?
In business, when we move from just solving problems to more expansive thinking, we create better outcomes. Like the switch hitter in baseball, we become more agile. It doesn’t matter if the pitcher is right or left-handed, the batter can switch it up and respond.
It’s the same for leaders in business. You are an agile leader when you can close the gap between “fixed” thinking; “I’m committed to being right,” and “expansive” thinking, which equals “I’m committed to learning.”
Much like in baseball, it requires deliberate practice. Switch hitters are rare both in baseball and business. It takes work.
Most people assume that learning happens when we’re developing into adults; at school and university. This was a commonly held belief. The idea that our brains can constantly learn, what scientists call neuroplasticity, was first advanced by William James in 1890.² Even then, it wasn’t widely accepted.
Until the 1960s, researchers believed changes in the brain only took place during infancy and childhood. By early adulthood, it was believed the brain's physical structure was mostly permanent.³
Modern research demonstrate that the brain continues to create new neural pathways and alter existing ones as it adapts to new experiences, learns new information, and create new memories.
Brain plasticity refers to the brain's ability to change and adapt to experience, throughout our lifetime.
We all think differently and have distinct thinking patterns made up of four elements: Vision, Courage, Ethics, and Reality. Expanding your Thinking Pattern℠ helps you explore ideas, collaborate across silos, take action, and plan better.
When we’re “fixed” in our thinking we rely on the two strongest elements of our thinking pattern, much like relying on our dominant hand.
When we allow ourselves to be more “expansive” in our thinking, we learn to take advantage of the two quieter, less dominant elements. We give ourselves the mental dexterity to think differently.
For example, if I’m a big thinker, focused only on my idea, I may have the tendency to exclude the thoughts of others. Keeping with this example, I may ignore the evidence or planning stages that could bring my idea to fruition.
When we consciously move to the less used areas of our thinking pattern we become more “expansive.” We are developing a new skill. We are practicing.
With continued practice, we narrow the gap between “fixed” thinking and “expansive” thinking. We build our leadership muscle and practice being a switch-hitting agile leader.
Now we’re ready to hit the curveballs of business.
It was the best of plans; it was the worst of presentations.
It happens. A crushing bore of a meeting. A presentation that failed to move people. The dish for “dreary” is simple. Take your PowerPoint deck and re-christen it as a “narrative.” Tweak a couple of slides. Present.
What you have is a boring imposter. Walter Mitty dressed up as a dashing adventurer. A sheep in wolf’s clothing.
Maybe you heard of storytelling as a way to inspire, convince, and motivate. But your “narrative” trick didn’t work.
A simple re-badging won’t cut it.
You wouldn’t expect to re-brand Facebook as Google+ and get overnight success, would you? Or think Tidal has a better “narrative” than Spotify? You would not.
There’s a gap to fill between your re-named “narrative” and a story.
One word: emotion.
Emotion fills the gap between dusty and delightful, between re-worked and re-invigorated, between “narrative” and story.
A story is a persuasive device. A mechanism of influence.
Inside your story is a piece of information wrapped in emotion.
The mechanism of story has wondrous qualities. It’s a time machine—transporting audiences to different futures. It’s a camera—capturing moments, recalling memories and feelings. It’s a transformer—changing perspectives and opening up new vistas.
With story, beats of emotion mesh with a ticking gear of information.
That connection is missing in so-called business “narratives.” Yes, there is information—a relentless, well-articulated stream of logic—immortalized in PowerPoint. But emotion is a no-show.
If there is no emotion, there is no movement.
This is the classic premise in neuroscience and psychology.
It’s human 101.
For example, we’re more likely to donate to charity when presented with a specific emotional need. Showing the charity’s impact with plain old statistics won’t cut it.
(Sarah McLachlan sings Angel, and you care more about puppies).
We buy products based on marketing that strikes an emotional chord, even when the “other product” is objectively superior.
(Hello, all you Apple fans 😏).
We’re more likely to support aggressive responses—to terrorism, military encroachment, and political opposition—when we feel fearful or threatened.
(9/11).
Emotion.
This is the communication lesson we see over and over again in the big wide world, yet in the smaller confines of business; we miss it.
Business, despite being full of humans, ignores feelings.
Business needs people to make decisions and to take action.
You want customers to pass on positive word of mouth. You want employees to execute or lead change. You want people to buy what you sell.
So why don’t they?
You made a well-reasoned case. You have an ROI, you’ve worked out a USP, and you have a business plan.
But no dice. No movement.
Somewhere along the line, we have made the mistake of assuming people are rational—that we act based on logic.
We won’t. People don’t.
How often has a great idea moldered on the shelf inside your business? Or does an innovation stall with no path to market? Perhaps you are stymied. Your movement to simplify a product portfolio gains no traction? Or does your big transformation flames out?
Then, suddenly, the competition makes a move.
Fear.
Executives now pay attention. Your moldering idea is pulled from the shelf and quickly dusted off. It becomes the new bright, shiny object. The innovation is rushed to market. All hands are on deck to simplify and transform.
Why? Emotion.
Logic and good intentions will only get you so far. To the point of stillness, inertia, and immutable refusal. Employees simply “wait out” the latest push to transform.
All recognizable reactions to anyone who has led change.
This apathy was the case for the CEO of a large US-based multinational. “We have a money printing machine in the basement.” He lamented. “People are too comfortable. They see what we want to do, and they understand it, but we keep getting dragged back into what we did yesterday.”
This wasn’t the fault of his plan. It was his articulation of the plan.
It had no emotion. No burning platform. No holy grail.
Your audience has a secret wish.
You will find the wish nestled in the triangulation of hope, fear, and reason.
Hope isn’t just eternal; it’s internal. It’s intensely personal.
Hope comes in many forms: Hope for autonomy; to be self-directed, and to have control over your own work. Hope for mastery; to build skills, reputation, or competence. Hope as belonging—being part of a community or group or hope as recognition and appreciation for your work.
Hope motivates over the long haul.
Fear, with its conjoined twins of uncertainty and doubt, is the “mind-killer.” We avoid it at all costs. And avoidance spurs us to stand still or run fast.
When we stand still, wheels spin. We stick to the status quo. You see it in the form of the flashing neon sign of business bureaucracy, replete with semi-wise axioms of not “rocking the boat.” Or, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Inertia is the inquisitor of progress.
But we can use fear in our favor to move people. Whole businesses are built on this. Think: “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” Or Gartner’s hype cycles, which tap into a fear of obsolescence. The result? Conference attendance swells, and IT invests in the next new technology.
Fear on its own drives urgency, but it doesn’t last.
At the bottom of the motive triangle is reason.
Reason is the foundation of our rational arguments. It’s the justification we pass on to others. It’s required to rationalize the emotional decision we have made.
Reason may be the public face of the decision, but it’s never the trigger.
Your audience has a secret wish, but what is it?
People don't make decisions based on reason; we make decisions based on emotion. The reason is how we justify the decision. When your argument stalls, you aren't looking for a rationale; you're looking for emotion.
What do they hope for, what do they fear?
In war, the first casualty is truth. In business, it's communication.
Chaos. Confusion. A story from the front lines of WWI: A British Army Captain messages regimental headquarters: "Send reinforcements; we're going to advance."
Word travels through trenches by telephone and runner, reaching a puzzled adjutant. The message is in a sorry state, indecipherable: "Send 2 and 6 pence; we're going to a dance."
This 'slightly' exaggerated story is of the need for message discipline.
The military knows it needs clear communications; that's why they teach radio discipline. In basic training, you're trained to speak clearly, spell things out, and e·nun·ci·ate numbers.
Because garbled communications cost lives.
This is a story told to me by Bryce Hoffman.
Bryce is the author of the book, “American Icon” which chronicles The Ford Motor Company’s turnaround under Alan Mulally. Bryce shadowed Alan for months to research his book. This included a trip to New York, where Mulally presented progress on Ford’s turnaround to Wall Street.
Bryce, the story goes, was in the audience, sitting next to a gaggle of analyst types. Alan gave his guidance on the company and reviewed progress to date.
This was the third or fourth time Mulally had spoken to financial analysts since the plan’s introduction.
Afterward, Alan asked Bryce about the audience's reaction to his presentation.
Bryce: “Well... the feedback seems to be they’ve heard all that before. They’re looking for something new.”
When Bryce tells the next part of the story, he switches to an impersonation of Mulally’s drawl.
Bryce (recalling Mulally): “Why would we change the plan when we’re still working the plan?”
This is the essence of Message Discipline.
The turnaround story of Ford and Mulally’s leadership practices is a chronicle of iron-clad operational discipline.
And operational discipline is driven by message discipline.
It’s a favorite tactic of politicians and political consultants.
When a politician is asked a question, he or she doesn’t answer. Instead, they veer off into canned talking points.
The non-answer answer is an abusive offspring of message discipline.
Here, it’s carefully scripted and usually deliberately obtuse. Why do they do politicians do it? They want people to do something— vote or donate. They use message discipline to craft a powerful, emotional message that resonates with “their” voters. They stick to the message, find ways to repeat it, and often ignore anything that doesn't fit.
We must shed the bad and keep the good.
Message discipline is the fix for broken communication.
Poor communication causes a litany of ills—low productivity, employee turnover, missed deadlines, confusion and errors, reduced innovation, and poor customer service.
For these ills, there is a cure—better communication.
It’s not surprising that organizations that practice Message Discipline see benefits in clarity and focus, unity and shared purpose, improved performance, better decision-making, increased employee engagement, and better customer satisfaction.
There’s a simple cocktail—four ingredients to mix in and two to serve.
Three or four is probably enough. You cannot communicate everything. That’s a recipe for confusion. Overloading and overwhelming do not drive the kind of action you need.
Even when you are down to a few, some things are more important than others. Make that evident. Priority, urgency, and order must be clear. Otherwise, everything appears important, and then nothing is important. Things stall.
You can’t put this across in a way that is gobbledygook to someone. Make it as simple and as understandable as possible. Eradicate “corporate speak.” If a middle schooler can understand, you have it at the right level.
Remember, you are trying to move people. So clarity and understanding are not enough. Put “human” in the message. People respond to emotion more strongly than they do to fact.
People respond to stories.
Now you have the message; the hard part comes next.
Flip-flopping is a red flag for politicians and for you. It creates confusion. Mixed messages. Panic.
Connect the new initiative to the old one. Don’t chop and change what you ask people to do every month or every quarter. This is where storytelling is a superpower. It’s like telling a joke—as long as the punchline stays the same, how you set up the message can vary depending on the audience and circumstance.
The message and your behavior have to line up. Saying one thing and doing another. Asking for some result and inspecting an unrelated metric. Doesn’t work. Don’t ask for growth with a plan to sell solutions and then measure the success of products. If you are asking for an outcome, inspect that outcome.
Join us as we celebrate the remarkable significance of Women's History Month and feature a variety of articles from our women leaders.
Change happens. It happens all the time. It happens all around us.
In her second book, The Leadership Conversation, Rose Fass follows up her debut book, The Chocolate Conversation, by examining how effective leaders make bold change, one conversation at a time.
To launch the book, she joined Michal Flanagan for a LinkedIn webcast. As well as discussing the book, Rose enjoyed receiving questions from everyone who was able to join her in the live audience. We’re delighted to reproduce a small selection of those questions here, along with Rose’s answers.
Thanks again to everyone who was able to be a part of the event. Miss the event? You can watch the recording here.
The first is to know how to unpack a chocolate conversation. A big takeaway for people is to know how to recognize them, and how to unpack them.
The second is how to work in three spheres: the technical, the social and political. Our technical expertise, our social networks and our political standing. I don't mean politicking, I mean our political standing, our ability to position things to be both credible, likable, and plausible. Those things are very important. (If you’re unsure of where you fall in the three spheres, take our free conversation survey.)
The third one is, how can you have a civil discourse and not necessarily agree with the popular opinion? Can you turn conflict into a civil conversation? Major takeaway, keep it civil.
My father used to say, if you have to shout, you can't stand up to your side of the argument.
I never forgot it. I think being passionate is wonderful. I'm a very passionate person and I love when people show emotion and passion. When it turns into anger, there's something else going on. It's not just the other person having a different opinion. It's something attacking something very personal in you.
That's when we have to ask for a pause, get some level bodies, lower the temperature a little, bring the decibels down and recognize if I'm shouting and talking over someone, I've left the conversation. I'm no longer engaged. I'm having a dueling monologue, not a conversation.
My co-founder at fassforward, Gavin McMahon, has spent a lot of time in this area in what he calls the art of storytelling.
The ability to build a narrative with all the technical, social, and political aspects covered. That creates three elements: a hook -- something that invites people into the discussion, the meat -- substantive, absolute evidence that supports your premise, and finally a payoff -- which allows people to see what's in it for them.
Often if you look at conversations, whether they're happening in a PowerPoint deck or happening in an exchange between people, we jump right into the meat.
They don't open up with any kind of a hook or an attempt to bring people into the conversation. And then there's no real payoff.
Think about what's going to be the one or two sentences that invite somebody into this conversation. What's going to draw them in?
Be substantive. Make sure you have the right facts and evidence and data to support your premises or hypotheses. Remember what's in it for the person who is engaged with you. That's the way to craft a good message.
One of the things I find is when you want to get an executive to think differently, you don't start with what they're not doing right. Start instead with what they're doing that's really making a difference.
That opens the conversation up to have a dry run; to have a little bit of back and forth and to ask what it is they want to get across.
We also need to be asking how we connect and make things relatable to the people we're talking about. We need to be thinking about how we position something so that it feels like an easy transition from where we are today to where we want to go.
We have to connect a lot of dots in these conversations.
It’s lonely being an executive. Many executives don't have someone to think with. When you offer to think with somebody and you do it in the right way, they welcome it.
We don’t take that risk though because we're so afraid that if we go in and offer our help, it's going to be rejected. Always start with something really positive that gives that executive the opportunity to say, “Hey, this person really cares, wants to talk with me, wants to help me. I'm in.”
A little of both. It was exhausting, but I was energized every time I finished a chapter. Every time I read it back, I realized I had memorialized someone or something that mattered to me in my life.
I've had wonderful mentors in my life, wonderful experiences. Writing that 50 year conversation was like a memoir. I got to write about men and women who had an impact on my life, some of whom are not here anymore, but they left an indelible mark behind them.
For me, to be able to share those stories with people coming into this leadership world in this new generation, it just might shed light on what it means to have those kind of mentors and those kind of conversations.
So sometimes exhausting. Sometimes energizing. It's a paradox.
You can hear a recording of the the leadership conversation between Rose, Michael, and their audience by clicking here.
Hungry for more? Order your copy of The Leadership Conversation on Amazon or read more about Rose and her new book on the leadershipconversationbook.com.
You can also snag a copy of her first book, The Chocolate Conversation.
Join us as we celebrate the remarkable significance of Women's History Month and feature a variety of articles from our women leaders.
In the Spring of 2020, I was coaching a finance executive who did not take a step outside his house for 5 straight days (despite beautiful spring weather).
He was working longer hours and seeing his family less even though he was sharing the same four walls with them 24/7. In the years before COVID-19, work-related burnout had been a growing issue. The pandemic accelerated several trends, and near the top of the list — increased work-related stress and anxiety. According to a MetLife report in early 2020, 66% of employers expected a mental health crisis within three years.¹
We believe that the crisis is upon us and now is the time to address it.
The trends for workplace burnout have been in place for decades.
According to a 2019 Korn Ferry study, overall employee stress levels "have risen nearly 20% in three decades."² In the years before COVID-19, the primary drivers for our clients were:
Too many :
Too little:
By the end of 2019, 67% of full-time employees in the US felt some form of work-related burnout.³ Then COVID-19 hit.
Nothing like a once-in-a-century pandemic to take an already challenging situation and make it worse.
While burnout rates are elevated across all levels, a survey by Development Dimensions International found that “86% of high-potential employees are feeling burnout, and they’re twice as likely to leave compared to their peers.”⁴⁵ And it’s not just employees who are burning out at record levels, so too are leaders. Many leaders are learning the hard way that while work can be remote, leadership cannot.
The same study by DDI showed that the majority of business executives don’t think they are effective at leading virtually.⁵ For many leaders, it’s their own stress and anxiety that is driving their desire to get people back to offices as soon as possible. However, many of these leaders are missing the fact that by issuing blanket policies about the return to office, they are only adding to the burnout that their employees are feeling.
A recent survey of over 4,500 global employees who worked onsite pre-pandemic and were fully remote during the pandemic revealed that, “100% of them felt some anxiety about returning to work. 77% cited being exposed to COVID-19 as their top source of anxiety, followed by less flexibility at 71% and commuting to work at 58%”.⁶
Long before Zoom Gloom existed, Unilever was pioneering the importance of employee wellness.
Seven years before COVID-19 hit, they began a journey to change their culture and incorporate mental health into their learning program. They have used both internal resources and external coaches in a coordinated program. The results have not only led to healthier employees but have had a significant impact on their business.
According to their CHRO, Leena Nair, the company has realized a $2.50 return for every $1.00 invested in employee wellness.⁷⁸
Another example of a comprehensive and visionary approach to this crisis was recently announced by Verizon Media, Kellogg Company, Snap and Spotify.
They have combined resources to launch a joint program called “Mind Together.”⁸ It’s an initiative to “address mental health and set a new standard in how employees are supported at work.” The goal is to develop awareness through improved communications, offering mental health education programs, and hosting conversations with mental health thought leaders. The four companies plan to meet regularly to share feedback, course correct and develop blueprints for future plans.
How do you know if you, or a member of your team, are experiencing work-related burnout?
The Maslach Burnout Inventory - General Survey (MBI-GS) is the leading measure of burnout and has been validated over 35 + years of extensive research. The survey focuses on 3 specific areas; exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy.
Exhaustion is often one of the first signs of work-related burnout and also one of the easiest to identify in yourself and in others. Keep an eye out for employees that start arriving late, and look or act unusually tired or run down. Notice statements like:
Cynicism or indifference toward projects, clients, and/or co-workers is often correlated with burnout as well. Cynicism can be more difficult to detect, but can be sensed in defeated body language, think: eye-rolling, crossed arms, or mumbling under the breath; as well as through unanswered emails or phone calls. Cynicism can sound like:
Professional efficacy measures whether a person believes they will be effective at their work moving forward as well as a sense of satisfaction with past and present accomplishments. Lack of professional efficacy can also be subtle; some cues include submitting uncharacteristically low-quality work, missing important meetings or deadlines, or an overall sense of disengagement or distraction. A lack of professional efficacy might sound like
Leaders who are in tune with their teams are more likely to notice these early signs of burnout and are therefore better able to address them more effectively.
Awareness always precedes change.
Comprehensive and consistent educational programming can empower leaders and employees to bring awareness to areas of concern as well as arm them with the tools, resources, and confidence to address issues as they arise and before they become problematic.
Set the example by attending the workshops and using the resources yourself, and watch your team follow suit.
Mindful leaders are present and in tune with both themselves and their teams.
When challenges arise, mindful leaders approach them with curiosity and openness. Obstacles will then become an important opportunity for understanding, presence, awareness, and even large-scale transformation to take place.
Mindful leaders are able to recognize and express appreciation for the hard work and efforts of their team and are adept at delivering both positive and negative feedback with compassion and warmth. They guide with humility and grace, recognizing their own strengths and weaknesses, and have a willingness to ask for help or advice when it’s needed.
Teams with mindful leaders experience an enhanced sense of cohesion, collaboration, and group engagement; all attributes of a secure and thriving workplace.
I (Carolyn) vividly remember my orientation days at the well-known NYC hospital I worked at in my 20’s.
Everyone, from entry-level employees to top doctors, was required to attend, and the overall purpose was made crystal clear: we are committed to excellence, community service, and hope, and every employee is an integral part of this community; what you do matters. Top-down messaging to that end was consistently repeated through regular programming, education, special events, and reminders.
A clearly defined shared purpose helps people visualize how their work directly contributes to a larger goal. It allows them to appreciate the positive aspects of their jobs, boosts morale, and enhances workplace culture. These are all effective ways to reduce stress and burnout.
Is the purpose so simple and inspiring that every employee knows it by heart? Starbucks has a great purpose statement, “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.” Short, achievable, and inspirational.
Culture can be shaped through simple rules. At fassforward, we “fill buckets.” This is based on the philosophy of a children’s book. In short, we all walk around with invisible buckets; positive actions fill the bucket and negative actions empty it. Our goal is to fill buckets by encouraging a culture of empathy, compassion, and kindness both in our treatment of clients and our colleagues.
Remember, people are happier and will do more when they feel that they are contributing to a worthwhile purpose.
We are often so focused on what’s not working (too stressed, overloaded with work and responsibilities, too many zoom meetings), that we lose sight of what is.
Well-being is essential to fostering improved physical, mental, and emotional health. Daily activity, nourishing foods, and a sense of connection, both to yourself and to others, are critically important components of well-being and should be practiced consistently to realize the full spectrum of benefits.
When considering more comprehensive health and wellness promotion programs, keep a keen eye out to identify and subsequently mitigate common barriers; what’s preventing active participation?
The best way to get this information?
It might be tempting to throw a few programs together and then move on. But it is important to regularly review and solicit feedback so that efforts continue to meet and exceed the needs of the participants and of the company.
In a recent OpEd, Nike CEO John Donahoe demonstrated a great leadership moment by making himself vulnerable and opening up about his own mental health.
“I’ve embraced a lot of help. I’ve had the same therapist for the last 30 years. I have spiritual advisors and business mentors, who I call often for guidance. I can’t imagine being able to perform today without getting help.”⁹ Under his leadership, Nike has initiated several programs to address work-related burnout including access to wellness coaches, free wellness memberships, support for families (including paid parental & family leave, back-up care, childcare subsidies), and more.
It’s time for business leaders to take active steps to address this crisis. As our grandmother/grandmother-in-law Annie Doorish constantly reminded us: “your health is your wealth” (she recently passed at 101).
Join us as we celebrate the remarkable significance of Women's History Month and feature a variety of articles from our women leaders.
How many people, on their deathbed say, “I wish I’d spent more time establishing best-in-class HR policies,” or “If only I had more time to strategically manage pricing, sales, revenue, and profits.” The answer is no one. No one. But chances are you may be spending a significant part of your life focused on those very things.
During these times of uncertainty and disruption, people are starting to question this. They understand the need to work, but other things are under consideration. They’re reconsidering not just how and where they work, but why they work. It’s a question that has taken root, adding to a general malaise. More and more of my clients are coming to me looking for a way to work it through.
The value of some work is obvious. Teachers impart knowledge and skills. Doctors, nurses, and EMTs save lives and heal the sick. The military defends the country and its citizens. But others stand on murkier ground. Launching a marketing campaign or a sales kick-off can be invigorating. Crafting an impactful brand message can induce pride while adding to the bottom line. But does it meet a deeper purpose? If so, what is it? These are heavy questions. But these are heavy times.
“Do what you love, and you will never work another day in your life.”
Expressed or not, that’s the ideal. But if you haven’t figured out what you love, what then? Does it matter? Simple answer. It can. Studies¹ have found that having a purpose in life leads to several life-enhancing outcomes — improved sleep, better physical health, improved memory, longevity, and beneficial changes in gene expression. These are benefits that transfer to the work we do. They contribute to a sense of fulfillment and improve performance². Simply put, having something outside of yourself that drives you is good.
The Japanese concept of ikigai captures this concept in a word. It has no direct translation in English. But it roughly means “happiness in living.³” In Japan, it’s considered essential to well being and key⁴ to living a long and fruitful life. It presents a contrast to the western concept of purpose where life’s purpose means “going big.” A grand or noble cause. “I want to save lives!” “I want to improve education!” “I want to end racism!” “I want to save the planet!” Take your pick. This is what’s lost in translation. Linking purpose to big may be the concept’s greatest weakness. These pie-in-the-sky ambitions are often a set up for disappointment.
Ikigai is more realistic and achievable. Rather than going big, it embodies the ordinary, personal, and small. They're the things that allow us to look forward to the future, even if our days aren’t currently so bright. The sweet spot is the intersection of what you love, what you are good at (not always the same thing), what you believe the world needs, and what you can get paid for.
noun
One’s reason for being, which in principle is the convergence of one’s passions, beliefs, values, and vocation: those who follow the concept of ikigai undertake the activities of their life with willingness, and a satisfying sense of meaning:
In my work as an Executive Advisor and Coach, I’m seeing a similar scenario play out. My client, let’s call her “Ann,” has buckled down to meet the new demands and responsibilities of her job. She’s meeting the many new challenges of our time. She's doing what she was always capable of, but perhaps not received the recognition for. This is the peak of what she'd always strived for. But instead of feeling triumphant, she's burned out. Instead of excited, she’s unfulfilled and disillusioned. “Do I really want to do this anymore?” “Is it worth it?”
As ikigai suggests, there's always a small seed of purpose in anything we do. The daily grind overshadows it a lot of the time. It gets lost in the stream of what needs to get done, but it’s there. It's the thing that energizes us, the request we say yes to without blinking or thinking. It's the thing we're known for and would spend all our time doing if unencumbered by money or time. I've been helping clients, like Ann, to take a step back, reflect, reset, and uncover it.
There are many suggestions on how to find your ikigai. Most focus on an individual thinking about the ikigai categories. But simply asking yourself - what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for, can leave you no more informed than when you started. This approach also discounts the many ways Japanese society supports their version of life's purpose. It’s a culture⁶ geared towards thinking beyond one's personal needs, perhaps fostering a sense of purpose more easily.
At fassforward, we have created a tool that is more geared towards the western concept of purpose while arriving at the same point. It's called the Life Crafting MURAL. It is a guided, one-on-one, in-depth interview to uncover my client's ikigai. Using the digital “whiteboard and post-it tool,” MURAL, my clients record their answers to questions in four categories. We explore their hidden values, reputation, dreams, and typical steps they take to achieve them. By the end of the exercise, patterns emerge highlighting what really matters to them. Most importantly, they have clear, actionable steps they can take.
If it’s just reflection, you may ask, why can’t I do it myself? For a Life Crafting MURAL to be effective, three elements are essential:
On the face of it, you can fill out a Life Crafting MURAL alone. In the name of time-saving, many of my clients ask to do just that. But doing so would be a waste. Honest, detailed answers are required for the exercise to be useful. Most people don’t realize that their answers don’t make the cut. Post-it notes don’t talk back after all!
Writing is a good example of this. Many of my clients say that they are good at it, and they enjoy it. If left to fill in their MURAL alone that might be all that would go on their post-it. They would move on. But they would be missing an opportunity. Even if you write the world’s best pre-reads or white papers. Even if you do this often, it may not be what you are referring to when you say that you like to write. There may be something else that taps into your passion.
What kind of writing is important to you? Think-pieces, essays, short stories, blog posts, proposals, screenplays? Are there opportunities to do this type of writing where you currently work? Can the kind of writing that you have to do, help develop the kind that you want to do? The list could go on but the distinction is important. The questioning gets to it. Only targeted reflection and thorough answers serve the process. Guided questioning, and crucially, challenges by a trained interviewer, avoid this common pitfall.
Respondents write their answers on virtual post-it notes. They share a screen with the interviewer. The extra step of searching for the right word (and sometimes how to spell it!) highlights and reinforces repeated themes. The limitations of the small post-it like squares also force respondents to be precise. Precision and detail provide the clues to what is important. They ensure that the final MURAL is meaningful. Short-hand and broad terms may make sense to the respondent in the moment but be forgotten later. This potentially life-changing document would be useless if you didn’t remember what you meant in a few weeks’ time!
The Life Crafting MURAL exercise ends when all four sections are completed. Patterns emerge across the categories. They are often things that people understood about themselves intuitively. They are often things that they have never voiced. But when we are done, their most tightly held values are revealed. Their strengths and passions (personally and professionally) are identified. New next steps are outlined. They are left with an actionable guidepost for making decisions going forward. Together they encompass their ikigai.
We spend a significant part of our lives working. If we’re fortunate, we get opportunities to learn and get better at what we do. But if your work does not tap into your sense of purpose or ikigai, the returns on investment may never catch up to all you’ve put in. We are at a moment in time in which many are finding this to be the case. Aligning what you do with your values and passions, what you know how to do, and can get paid for could be the way forward. In other words, uncovering your ikigai may be the answer. The Life Crafting MURAL exercise helps many uncover this elusive concept.
Not everyone has a coach to guide them through this process. This doesn’t mean that aspects of this process aren’t accessible to everyone. The next time you get lost in something, the next time you volunteer or say “yes” to something before the request gets out of someone’s mouth, take note. Ask yourself, am I excited about this? Am I looking forward to it? Will I be disappointed if I don’t get to do it again? Chances are you are tapping into elements of your ikigai. It’s a starting point worth uncovering. Shouldn't we all be among the lucky ones whose life’s work reflects their purpose? Shouldn't we all enjoy the benefits of a satisfying, purpose-driven life?
G.O.A.T. is quite a claim.
Debates rage over Messi or Pelé, Schumacher or Hamilton, Williams or Graf. We’re animated by our sporting heroes. A select, slightly nerdier few are equally animated at the intersection of data and stories.
Imagine the scene; an establishment populated by passionate data fans and storytelling nerds, each arguing their corner for the greatest “data story” ever told.
Which data story wins?
The clever OG answer: DNA. The twisted ribbon of sugars and phosphates that encodes life. Packed with data and information? Check. Does it tell a story? Check. Our genetic code not only informs our story but how we interpret all other stories.
Seems like a no-brainer.
But: disqualified. That clever answer of DNA isn’t something we can learn from and readily apply to business.
Sorry, my competition, my rules.
Fan favorites like Moneyball must be weeded out.
So too, The Big Short (investors use data to bet against the US mortgage market), The Imitation Game (Alan Turing and the boffins at Bletchley Park build data crunching machines to crack Nazi codes), and The Joy Luck Club (women play mahjong and share life stories, with the use of data to tally wins and losses.)
All great stories where data is the McGuffin that moves each respective plot along.
But the category is not stories about data. The category is data stories.
Before settling this, the rules of the game must be defined.
What determines the G.O.A.T. in sports? The number of Major Championships? The ability to transcend the sport? The selection of “greatest” depends on how you define greatness.
(BTW, sports G.O.A.T, IMO—Jahangir Khan.)
To tell a great story with data means the audience has to “get” it.
Like any story, the structure has to aid engagement and understanding. You want attention. The story has to cut through, it has to be crisp.
Crisp is at the core of Axios’ business model. The news organization, founded in 2016 by former Politico journalists, practices “smart brevity.” It’s a way of storytelling that uses subheads like “why it matters,” “the backstory,” and “yes, but” followed by a bulleted list detailing the news.
A modern journalistic style is built on an AI-powered toolset, which condenses and scores prose.
The aim: to cut through the noise.
There is always more to the story, and there is always more data.
The trick is in selecting what’s essential. This is the editorial decision to “goldilocks” the data and pick not too much nor too little, but just the right amount.
Relevant data is a tricky one. It’s audience dependent, and for most business audiences, it’s not just a matter of selecting the correct data but ordering and emphasizing parts of the data. The Economist’s Graphic Detail does a great job of taking big data sets and exposing just enough interesting nuggets to tell the story.
Visualization often gets a nod in great data stories.
Allowing people to “see” the data reduces complexity and makes your story engaging and understandable.
Here, you might look at the classics. One popularized by Edward Tufte is Joseph Minard's map of Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812. Or John Snow’s London maps studying the spread of Cholera. The New York Times’s work in COVID-19 data visualization is a modern-day example of visualization in action.
The story has a point. The data punches that point home.
It’s the insight, the ‘aha,’ or the moral of the story. Think Aesop’s fables: the lesson pulls the story along.
This is true of Kevin Hartman’s nomination. The insight behind Amazon's inception as a bookstore rather than a pet store or furniture store. As an investment banker, Jeff Bezos learned that books were highly correlated to high-net-worth individuals. This gave him a starting point. Which is why Amazon began its journey as a bookseller before becoming the everything store it is today.
To check the box of story, a data story has to tug on the heart and head. We should feel—awe, surprise, inspiration, or curiosity—an emotion that drags on our attention and sears the data into memory.
Alberto Cairo’s G.O.A.T nomination is certainly that. Ida B. Wells's investigative journalism documented the atrocity of lynching through her articles and pamphlets, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases, and The Red Record, in the 1890s.
A data story is pointless if it doesn’t stick. Great ones occupy memory. Like Little Red Riding Hood’s cloak, there is something vivid—and usually visual and repeatable—in the story that sticks like a burr in your brain.
This is the anti-chartjunk argument. While it’s good to remove tick marks, unnecessary lines, and irrelevant detail, a strong visual metaphor or cue can make your story memorable.
Think of USA Today’s classic visual explainers or this graphic of incarceration rates from the Prison Policy Initiative.
My entry is a short one.
In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the Indian space program, saying they had put a mission to Mars for less than it cost to make the movie Gravity. 14 words. One line in a speech.
Can it be the greatest data story ever told?
To date, that story has been picked up in over 10,000 news articles. It has been the subject of reporting at CNN, the BBC, Reuters, and in newspapers all over the world.
A story in one sentence.
Let me repeat. The story is one sentence. You don’t even have to remember the numbers.
Two lonely data points and the comparison between them drive the story. We don’t know even know the actual figures. This is minimal storytelling at its best. It relies on our ability to fill in the blanks and self-complete the story, even when all the detail isn’t there. The numbers, for the purpose of this story, don’t matter. It’s the comparison that does.
In case you are curious—the cost of a Hollywood blockbuster, $100 million, and the cost of the Mangalyaan mission, $76 million.
Yes.
Modi’s statement fills the mind's eye, drafting off Gravity’s reported marketing budget of $80 million. No need for more visualization when people can easily picture the courage of Clooney and the bravery of Bullock in space. It’s close enough.
That is the beauty of this story. It is so on point. It’s what Modi later attributed to “frugal engineering” and the “power of imagination.” For an economic power like India, it’s on brand—technologically advanced and cost-effective.
Dig deeper into the numbers and make a comparison, and you will see other countries’ efforts. The U.S. Maven satellite cost $671 million. The European Space Agency’s Mars Express, $386 million; the Japanese Nozomi, $189 million and the Russian Fobos-Grunt, $117 million.
Are you not floored that it can cost less to go into space in real life than it does to make a movie about it? It’s a surprising statistic, and it’s the crazy, lateral comparison that makes it stick.
You be the judge.
A version of this story has stuck in my head for eight years.
...........
Thanks to the folks that crowdsourced ideas to the data story playoff bracket.
Anthony Lombardo, Michael Gooch-Breault, Sheila Johnson, Alberto Cairo, Nolan Haims, Stewart Wolfe, Daniel Harrison, Bob Scavilla, Stephanie Evergreen, Kevin Hartman, Ray Vella, Ash Kanagat.
Here’s a sentence you might not like:
You sell stuff; we all sell stuff.
This is the two-word cornerstone of capitalism "sell stuff." The brief “sell stuff” gives you a basic understanding of every company’s business strategy.
Still not buying it? Let's continue.
Every client we have sells stuff. Mastercard sells the convenient transfer of money between buyer and merchant. Mastercard’s convenient transfer is sold to you through a bank. Verizon sells connection, along with phones and devices, through retail stores and direct to business. Allstate sells peace of mind in the form of a policy through its agents. Chick-fil-A sells chicken sandwiches through its franchises.
We all sell stuff. It is the “what”—the stuff—and the “how”—the sell— differ.
“Sell stuff” describes the basics of your business strategy too. Always has, always will.
"But," you say, “I don’t sell stuff. I work in engineering.” You build the stuff other people sell.
“I don’t sell stuff. I work in HR.” You hire people to build and sell stuff.
“I work in finance; that’s not selling stuff.” It is. It’s making sure the stuff is sold efficiently and profitably.
“What about IT? I just keep the systems running.” Yes, the systems that sell stuff.
Buying it now?
Value for ourselves, our customers, and our stakeholders.
The best way to understand the value game is to visualize a line. At one end of the line are you and your business, creating value by selling to customers. At the other end of the line are all the inputs you need to make the stuff, market the stuff and sell the stuff.
This line is a value stick.
This “value stick” is the brainchild of Harvard Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee. He is the author of Better Simpler Strategy. To play the value game is to extend the length of the line. The greater the length of the stick, Oberholzer-Gee argues, the greater the value created.
This is a profound idea.
The value stick connects all the strategies in your organization—product strategy, financial strategy, HR strategy, sales strategy, and others. Strategies, left unattended, exist in silos. Connecting these strategies and having them reinforce each other creates additive value.
And all along the length of the stick are people.
Those people are talking to each other, emailing, and PowerPointing. They exchange information and influence each other. Collectively, they make big and little decisions. And the quality of information and influence exchange either creates or destroys value.
The value of any business is the sum of the decisions it makes.
If we can create more value by getting better at exchanging information and influencing each other, and therefore making better decisions, then how do we improve?
American writer Jonathan Gotschall points to an answer. “A story is a trick for sneaking information into the fortified citadel of the human mind.”
The information and influence exchange is improved through storytelling. As communication improves, decisions improve. Value increases.
Storytelling is not the province of marketing. It’s on all of us. We all sell stuff. We all influence decisions. We can all improve our storytelling skills.
But first, we have to understand four genres of business story.
The first is the one you naturally think of with business storytelling.
Brand stories create a relationship between the consumer and the brand. They build worlds. Done well, they reinforce the qualities of the brand, put the brand in the buyer’s consideration set, and create a world the buyer wants to live in.
Think about the brands you admire, and you can see this world-building at work.
IKEA does this literally. Its stores and commercials are little worlds filled with Swenglish Billy’s, Poängs, and Stockholm rugs. You can touch and sit in these worlds, and afterward, as you aspire to Scandi living, enjoy some meatballs.
Apple leads a masterclass of world-building, Putting a dent in the universe with cult-like fanboys convinced their stuff is “iBetter.”
Patagonia’s values are at every touchpoint, showing it’s in business to save our home planet.
Brand stories and the worlds they offer create enormous value.
They lengthen the value stick with the brand's intangible asset. A cushion of goodwill covering poor decisions and wobbly execution.
Just look at the recent ride of Tesla, with its story of a battery-powered future. At its peak, the Tesla story created a market cap of over $1.2 Trillion. With that, you could buy IBM, Mastercard, Coca-Cola, CVS, and FedEx and still have $241 Billion in change for a fleet of private yachts and a social media platform.
Stories equally damaged the Tesla brand, with a recent market drop bigger than the legacy car market Tesla competes with.
The brand story creates a world where our hero wants to live. A world where the hero/ buyer covets your product. A world full of...
Products sell because of stories.
And a product story is far more than a list of features and benefits. If you get the story right, people repeat it. The user hears the product story and imagines a better version of themselves.
A product story is, by necessity, a science fiction.
The product story places objects and services in a future world, one better than today. The product story has the buyer and end-user as the hero/ protagonist. The product is a magic bean, dispelling the troubles and fears of our hero.
And the product story has a second function.
In the product’s journey from whiteboard to code or napkin to manufacture, there are many people and decisions. Product stories make believers of investors and engineers. They clarify fit for purpose and ultimately allow teams to build products people love.
Those product stories are adapted into...
Great salespeople tell great stories.
They’re also consummate listeners. They have the gift of getting others to tell their story. Like a character from Rumplestiltskin, they can spin this straw into gold. The cues from the prospective buyer’s story are woven into what they’re selling.
Within the genre of sales story are love stories and horror stories.
The love story is told of a similar customer with a similar problem who used the magic beans the salesperson is selling. The horror story is told of another who made the error of not buying your product.
One of our clients, Commvault, sells data backups to IT organizations. What could be a very dry story of speeds and feeds is a story of providing protection in a scary world.
The horror story. When a May ransomware attack brought a major gas pipeline to a standstill over the summer, desperate drivers resorted to hoarding fuel in plastic bags. The pipeline failed to protect its systems and flailed in bringing them back online.
The love story. A month later, a meat-packing company suffered a similar attack. You didn’t hear about it and ate burgers on the 4th of July because of Commvault’s “magic beans.” Their customer was back online in hours.
Sales storytelling is personal.
Hand-to-hand and face-to-face, good salespeople adapt and weave stories together to explain, connect dots, and move their customers over the line.
In the process, they frustrate marketers.
Those marketers have carefully crafted a forty-slide “narrative.” They might even have trained people to tell the narrative, one slide at a time. Then those same marketers howl in anguish as each salesperson selects their three favorite slides to tell their customers some sales stories.
This brings us to the last of the genres of business story.
Leadership and storytelling are two sides of the same coin.
On one side are choices. Decisions. Life happens, and leadership follows. The flip side of the coin executes those decisions through people. Storytelling clarifies those decisions. It amplifies them and creates followership.
Both are vital.
While a decision or choice rests on a leader or group of leaders; bringing people along, inspiring them toward a future, and allowing them to see themselves in the picture requires storytelling.
Leadership stories are the foundational genre of business stories.
They bring together disparate pieces of the puzzle. They are the stuff of influence and information. These stories align and motivate people. They fuel and connect brand stories, product stories, and sales stories.
It’s about shared context.
Ronan Dunne is the former CEO of Verizon Wireless and the Chairman of Six Nations Rugby. The gregarious Irishman is a master storyteller. A believer in and practitioner of leadership stories. For Dunne, storytelling is about context. “When people have common context, our shared opportunities are markedly better... Leaders, by virtue of the fact they are managing towards outcomes—create a common context. Not just their context, but a common context.”
And common context is part of the leadership conversation.
This is a topic central to Rose Fass’s new book, The Leadership Conversation. She warns of chocolate conversations: the malaise of information sharing without context, which causes mixed messages, confusion, and swirl.
These conversations destroy value.
According to Rose, “Chocolate Conversations are everywhere in an organization. And, Chocolate Conversations can cost a company its relevance—people inside and outside the company lose track of the story.”
The signs are everywhere.
Shuttling information back and forth without adding value. Meeting overload, dense PowerPoint, fire-fighting, poor prioritization, and distracted thinking.
Leadership stories paint a picture—one people see themselves in.
Look up the word “inspire.” It's about giving people the urge to want to do something. These are the twin leadership conversations of framing the world and moving people to action.
We are in the game of creating value, which comes from people, which means storytelling.
Ideas merely stated aren’t enough. We need to see, smell, taste, feel. Then ideas become real.
In author Karen Chance’s description of a less than positive first impression, we smell impatient irritation. We edge away from the volatile unpredictability. In one descriptive sentence we receive a world of sense impressions. It’s impossible to not feel emotional response. Written words coming real.
When we think of the words in the average business presentation though, verbal vivacity is better summed up by artist Gerhard Richter: “Grey is the color… the most important of all… absent of opinion, nothing, neither/nor.”
Business presenters who inspire action are far from gray.
We might not always like or agree with what they say, but we still hear when they say it. Their messages find us while other presenters fade into the background.
Vivid description is a bright spotlight. It makes things tangible to our senses. It triggers recall and moves us to action.
What though if your message is of a bad news variety that you’d frankly rather went unnoticed? (Politics anyone?) In this case, deliberately toning down the description and fading to gray has precisely this effect. Your content becomes a shell. ‘Absent opinion, nothing, neither/nor.’
Full force color or shades of gray is a conscious choice.
Emotion is essential to action.
Successful presenting isn’t just about what you want the audience to know. Humans aren’t logical. You need to consider feelings and attitudes. That’s why great stories are flavored with vivid descriptions.
Our brains respond to vivid words and actions. Descriptive phrasing lights up the parts of the brain that deals with the senses and emotions.
To make people move, you need to work out which emotions you need to work with. How does the audience feel about your message? What do you want them to feel about it? The recipe to get them from point A to point B is where sensory language does it’s work.
Here are four easy ways to bring flavor to your content:
Facts (and certain green vegetables) might be wholesome, but without the zesty zing of descriptive seasoning, fail to appeal.
Adjective lists, like this one, provide a spice cabinet of description.
When we add descriptive adjectives, facts come to life.
A literal ‘spice cabinet of description’ would be strange indeed. A metaphorical one however? That would work.
Metaphor take the qualities of one item, and applies them to another. It’s a sensory transfusion.
If math is more your taste than metaphor, you might prefer a formula:
‘A is to B, as C is to D’ = ‘Flavor is to food as description is to meaning’
Analogy adds scientific rigor and a sense of logic to the flavor of metaphor.
All this talk about food might be making you hungry. Maybe you skipped lunch. You might be little irritable and angry. You might even say you're therefore ‘hangry’.
Blending the front of one word with the back-end of another creates vivid description, with the added appetizer of novelty.
Bringing words to life by using description is known as ‘ornamentation’. The same discipline is used by architects. Having designed a new building, architects take time to design pleasing visual elements. These ornaments take the building from cement and steel and glass block, and turn it into a place people want to inhabit.
Architects are also careful that none of those ornaments detract from the function.
The same applies to ornamentation in speaking. Good description builds form , without cluttering function. As French writer Luc de Clapiers put it: “Clearness ornaments profound thoughts.” In choosing descriptions lean initially towards the toned-down. You can then test the effect on your audience and gradually build-up.
Experiment with flavor. Find the descriptive blend that works for you.
How do I begin?
That isn't a philosophical or a psychological dilemma. It’s a practical question. How do I begin my conversation? How do I respond to an argument? How do I open my presentation or start my pitch?
We build first impressions blisteringly quickly, and our minds wander.
Turns out, we pay attention like misers in a recession — sparingly. Our brain doesn’t brighten a light on things of interest; it lowers the lights on everything else. Researchers have found a filter circuit that controls our attention. The Thalamus. This filter automatically resets about four times a second.
In trying to get any message through, we’re competing against blinking neural circuits designed to wander.
We’re competing against noise.
Sooner or later, we face a challenge. The big presentation. A pitch to investors or prospects. A moment on the main stage. A report to colleagues or a speech in front of friends.
Whatever the reason, how do you start? is a tricky question.
Done well; you have people leaning forward and interested. Done badly, you have people leaning back, bored.
When we build presentations on behalf of clients or create learning programs or help product and commercial managers tell their story, we think of a structure that contains three elements. A Hook. The Meat. And a Payoff.
This is how you start. It’s a way to give the audience a sense of what’s coming, to capture their attention and interest.
This is how you organize the bulk of your presentation. It’s the narrative structure that holds it together. For the audience, it’s an easily digestible set of chunks that present a logical sequence of information.
This is how you end. Here you're summarizing the key points of your argument. It’s the call that invites your audience to participate. The close that moves people to take action. It’s the payoff for your hook.
Ask yourself if you have done this before. In preparation for the big presentation, you’ve opened up PowerPoint and started writing. A title. The title slide contains not just the title but, helpfully, your name, the date, and the company you work for.
An outline with an agenda. The topics you want to cover. Your title and agenda slide then become, inadvertently, your Hook.
This is possibly the worst way to start a presentation.
Writers and creative types spend a lot of time thinking about beginnings. They know it's important to get their audience hooked. They will spend hours writing and re-writing the opening line or scene, to make sure they have it right. You can learn a lot from the first line of a book or the opening of a movie.
Fifty years ago, movies all began the same way. Big title, stirring music, then the opening credits. The long list of people starring in, directing, and making that movie. That’s the movie equivalent of the title slide and agenda. They don’t open that way anymore. They open with a bang.
My favorite example is Star Wars. I was eleven years old, and I remember the excitement of queuing up to see the movie everyone was talking about. At the time, I didn’t know much about it.
As I settled in, the opening line appeared on the screen, “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” Wait. Hold on. That doesn't make sense. If it's a science fiction movie, then shouldn't it be in the future?
Now I'm leaning forward. Just then, a huge spaceship rumbles overhead. I've never seen anything like it. Then the sounds of gunfire as an even bigger spaceship rumbles into view.
With that opening, George Lucas set a hook worth billions of dollars.
It’s fair to say that while your big presentation might be important, it’s not a major feature film. You don’t have the time or resources of George Lucas. So how do you start?
We analyzed the top-rated presentations. Presentations that were rated “Inspiring,” “Funny,” “Fascinating,” and “Jaw-Dropping.” We didn’t find any that started with an Agenda. We didn’t find any that started with that old standby — a quote. Instead, we found seven hooks, used over and over again.
The most popular type of hook is a quick story. A relevant, often amusing, retelling of an incident or experience. This humanizes you as a speaker. Even a story of failure can often lend credibility to you on the subject. It’s a bit of framing that can go a long way. You become more relatable to the audience, which allows your message to get through.
Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight | TED Talk
Some pictures say a thousand words. They can grab your audience at the same time. If you have powerful visuals that capture the theme of your presentation, use them. Instead of telling the audience how a new product works, show them. Humans have excellent imaginations, but sometimes it’s easier to do the work for your audience.
Blaise Agüera y Arcas: How PhotoSynth can connect the world's images | TED Talk
This is a pithy statement that captures your views on the topic. Done well, it entices the audience to come on a journey with you. We all have our opinions, and hearing someone who agrees or disagrees with them will always grab our attention. Use it as your hook!
Richard Dawkins: Militant atheism | TED Talk
Layout the highs and lows of your story. Talk about the path you will follow. Done well, it can add a sense of drama. With everyone on the same page, all focus will be on the task at hand.
Benjamin Zander: The transformative power of classical music | TED Talk
Not an easy task, but if you’ve got a good — relevant — funny story or joke in your arsenal, use it. Warning: it’s difficult to pull off. In the right hands, it’s a mixture of provocation and surprise wrapped together and delivered well.
Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? | TED Talk
If you want your audience to participate, why wouldn’t you ask them a question? Rhetorical questions work as people ask the question of themselves. It’s a way to get people engaged from the outset.
Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action | TED Talk
Use this one with caution. The edgier, kissing cousin of the belief statement, it’s a stimulating point of view that sets the tone for your presentation.
Jane McGonigal: The game that can give you 10 extra years of life | TED Talk
Next time you prepare for the big presentation, don’t just open up PowerPoint and start typing. Think about your audience. Spend time on the opening. Think about how you set the context and get people “hooked.”
Getting communication right is a no-brainer.
In an async, distributed, work-from-anywhere era, it’s especially true. Everyone agrees. According to Grammarly/ Harris Poll’s State of Business Communication Report, nine out of ten executives agree “communication is the backbone of business,” and “effective communication is essential for delivering business results.”
What was the tenth executive thinking? No one knows.
Communication: you can’t have too much.
Leaders have taken this to heart. Their mantra is to communicate, communicate, communicate. And yes, some communication is better than no communication. But too much becomes a sea of noise. Awash in competing communication, it’s critical to cut through the clutter.
Meet overwhelmed Bob.
Overwhelmed Bob is a proxy for your audience. He’s a character that may be on the front line, in the call center, at a retail location or in the field. Bob’s day job is a supervisor. He manages a team of ten. And he gets a lot of messages; from HR, from his boss, from operations, from finance. He gets texts and phone calls. His email box fills. He’s on Slack, but that isn’t helping.
He’s overwhelmed.
Bob’s condition — Overwhelmia Communicata —is one of modern work.
It’s a paradox: when there is so much messaging, how do you cut through the noise?
The answer to the attention problem is story.
Story, according to writer Jonathan Gotschall, is a trick for sneaking information into the fortified citadel of the human mind.
This isn’t just metaphorically true; it’s neuroscientifically true.
According to neuroscientist Paul Zak, the narratives that cause us to pay attention, and involve us emotionally, move us to action. They release oxytocin in the brain. And oxytocin helps us learn. Oxytocin is the key to the fortified citadel. In her book, The Leading Brain, neuroscientist Friederike Fabritius points out how the key works. “Rather than simply encouraging new learned behavior, oxytocin aids us in forgetting old learned behavior.”
Tell a story, and you have Bob’s attention.
A story is simple.
It’s memorable. It’s relevant: your audience sees themselves in the picture. Your story has an emotional hook. It has meat. And the payoff will move people to action.
Yes.
I hear that a lot.
People take the request literally. A seven-slide presentation magically shrinks. Fonts get smaller. Eyes strain. White space disappears. A thousand words, previously spread across seven slides, shrinks to nine-hundred and fifty. They’re in eight-point font, and I can’t read them. I don’t want to.
The point is missed.
The point of “just put it on one slide” was not a paper-saving request. It was a request to clarify your message. To cut. To prioritize. To make it simple.
To get to the point.
Another misunderstood request.
The request is not, “I need every detail.” But seven slides bloom to fifty. An appendix of spare thoughts appears. The “more detail” request is one of two things. The obvious one is that you have left out what your audience considers relevant. The less apparent reason is that your audience is not tracking to your thinking. Either way, you don’t have a “detail” problem.
You just haven’t figured out your audience.
The T-leaf is a tool we use over and over again.
The T-leaf is a starting point. A way to get at what your audience needs. A way to put in the right amount of detail and still tell a simple story. It’s a way to grab Bob’s attention without overwhelming him. It’s the platform on which to build your story.
The T-leaf is a line, splitting a piece of paper in two.
On the one side is “what I want.” It’s what you want your audience to feel, know, and do. On the other side is “what they want.” What the audience wants to feel (or how they are feeling), what they want to know, and what they might be prepared to do.
The “feel, know, do” are critical.
So much communication is an information dump — what I want you to know. But that can’t be a story. You want to sneak that information into the fortified citadel of the human mind. How do you want them to feel? What might they be feeling? Emotion is key to the story.
When it comes to “know,” a rule of thumb is to make it three things. What do you want them to know? That’s how you simplify. This pays off the “put it all on one slide” request because you can now prioritize and edit.
But what if what they want to know differs? More editing, and avoiding the “need more detail” trap. You have to tell them what they want to know. In doing so, you might drop some of what you want them to know. It just isn’t as important.
And last, do.
Remember, we’re trying to frame the way people see the world. But just crafting a narrative, giving people information, is half the story. You want them to do something. So make the request clear. Ask the ask.
That’s how you break the simplify/ more detail paradox. That’s how you grab Bob’s attention. That’s how you break through.
Every golf pro has a magic trick.
This is not Tiger Woods-level sorcery. This is the wizardry of Jo Pro. Jo Pro is a journeyman or woman who couldn’t putt well enough for the tour. A good college player, they couldn’t break out of the satellite circuit. But they have something going for them. A magic trick. The right blend of charm and skill to make a reliable living on the range, coaching adults.
What’s the trick? Feedback.
In the story that follows, the pastime doesn’t matter. It’s the trick that counts. Jo Pro could be a golf pro, a tennis pro, or a piano teacher. Replace golf swing with ground stroke, grip with finger exercises, Tiger with Serena, range with courts or class. Here’s the story of the trick.
First, the pledge.
You show up to the range and show Jo Pro something very ordinary — your swing. It has a thousand moving parts, at least half of them moving in the wrong direction. It looks like Tiger’s swing in a waking nightmare.
Jo Pro sees that, but he doesn’t say that.
Instead, the turn. Jo Pro finds something in your swing. It’s an honest compliment — something to build on. “I like the way you turn through the ball.” Or, “that’s a good position at impact.” Almost immediately, the strike is crisper; you feel more confident.
Now, the prestige. Jo Pro is going to break a habit.
“I just want to move your hands.” He demonstrates. He moves your palm and fingers, rewrapping them around the grip. It feels weird. You swing. Clunk. It feels like you’ve gotten worse. “I don’t care where the ball goes,” Jo Pro soothes. You swing again. Better. And again. Better still.
By the end of the lesson, Jo Pro has breathed new life into your game. He encourages you to practice and to see him next week.
And you do.
That’s the trick. You came back, and you paid to come back. One adult gave feedback to another adult; they took it onboard, practiced, and then came back for more.
There’s less magic trick and more snake oil.
In the world of work — between 9 and 5, with hierarchies, zoom calls, and paychecks — feedback is tough to take. It feels negative and personal. Coaching isn’t glamorous; it’s penal. In some work cultures, coaching is a scarlet letter. The words ‘needs coaching’ are synonymous with ‘is flawed.’ Coaching is delivered through the feedback sandwich.
Aka, the s*** sandwich.
It begins with a compliment.
“You’re great” or some other positive comment is the first layer.
By the time “great” has landed on the recipient's ears, they know a “but” is coming.
“But...” and the feedback is delivered. This is the s*** layer of the sandwich.
This is then completed by a final, “But don’t forget you’re great.”
Surprise, surprise, it doesn’t work.
Now — obviously — the feedback recipient needs more coaching. They clearly don't know how to take feedback. They have an issue.
If Jo Pro did this, he’d be out of business.
Or at least, we tend not to when it feels negative and personal.
It’s easy to shoot the messenger when feedback points to a flaw. If that negative feedback does creep through, it adds to a vicious cycle.
Let’s say you’re OK, but not great, at public speaking. You’ve worked hard at it because you know presentation skills are vital to your career. Still, there’s a nagging uncertainty at the back of your brain.
You get feedback in the form of a s*** sandwich.
The filling is “that you’re a bit boring.” Not the content is boring, or this section runs too long, but you. That feeds a doom loop. Where you get frustrating feedback, which reinforces the feeling you’re not good at this. You don’t like to get up and speak. So you don’t practice, and you don’t get better.
Reversing the loop starts with feedback.
If you lead a team or project, you know work isn’t just a technical journey of goals and KPIs. It’s a journey of improvement. Any leader you admire or respect has been a great teacher. That leader is able to provide feedback in a way you could receive it.
They know Jo Pro’s magic trick.
They tap into what Rose Fass, author of the Leadership Conversation, calls “the Pygmalion theory of management.” The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon where high expectations lead to improved performance.
It’s part of building a positive feedback loop.
Peter Watts calls this “catch people doing something good.” David Frost, head of coaching at fassforward, borrows from a children’s book. For him, it’s “filling someone’s bucket.” Building a positive outlook has benefits. The Mayo Clinic cites a link between “positivity” and health. Other studies show the link between positivity, engagement, and promotion at work.
Let’s say you think you are a good public speaker.
You will volunteer to get up and present. You like to do it. You, therefore, practice it. You seek out feedback to improve. The feedback you get is positive. You get better.
Positive feedback is part of a virtuous cycle.
In her book, The Brain-Friendly Workplace, Neuroscientist Friederike Fabritius points to the power of bucket filling.
“If you want good work relationships, strive to make sure positive interactions outweigh negative interactions” Her rule, based on the work of researcher John Gottman, is a magic ratio of positive to negative interactions of 20:1. “Yes, sometimes you must deliver negative feedback or turn down a deal. Be sure to follow up with positive interactions, though, to restore that magic ratio.”
The question, then, is how?
How do we avoid the s*** sandwich, reverse the vicious cycle to a virtuous one, and build on a basis of bucket-filling? We have to navigate four cautions on the way to the answer.
Jorg, the CEO, was hiring a new CMO.
Cassie, the CSO, had put her hat in the ring. On paper, she was perfect for the job, but Jorg was hesitant.
“Why?” I asked.
Jorg: “Well, I think CMO is a 24/7 job. She (Cassie) is a bit of a nine-to-fiver.”
Me: “Have you ever told her that?”
Jorg: “not exactly.”
Me: “How long has she worked for you?”
Jorg: “Seven years.”
I give you: Non-feedback feedback.
The opposite of non-feedback feedback is the tough love approach.
You were sick on the day of the Radical Candor™ course. But you get the idea. You need to be direct with people. Straight talk. There’s no room in business for wishy-washy. As long as it’s well-intentioned.
People pride themselves on their no-nonsense feedback. But their radical candor, or “let’s be honest...” is someone else’s gross insult. It’s cruelty, not kindness.
The “out of respect...” feedback is the s*** sandwich with no bread.
Here is the popularity trap.
The over-embracing of bucket filling goes like this. Bob, on your team, has done a great job on a recent call with a customer. You would like to point that out on your staff call. You do.
“Nice job with that client call.” You want to reinforce positive behavior. “I like the way you pivoted from that objection. It shows you listened deeply to their itch.” Bob smiles, pleased. The message about deep listening is received.
Then you look out at a sea of other faces. The equal opportunity praise begins. “Julie, you did a nice job with...” “Jen, we couldn’t do it without your...” You go around everyone on the team, picking out something — however small — to praise.
Imagine how Bob feels.
Feedback is filtered through a human lens.
That doesn’t make it wrong, and it can still be useful. It’s in the eye — and worldview — of the beholder. This is what psychologists call the idiosyncratic rater effect. Raters rate an employee differently, even when they are rating the same employee, over the same time period, for the same work.
The idiosyncratic rater effect is a bundle of biases with cute names like recency, spillover, leniency, and identity. Add the word effect to each, and you have the human condition that what we think about other people is more rooted in ourselves than it is in them.
So, how do we give effective feedback?
I can’t take credit for this. It’s Jordan Birnbaum’s trick.
I have seen it repeated by many a Jo Pro and some very smart leaders. Understanding that feedback is in the eye of the beholder, according to Birnbaum, “makes it far more valuable. Feedback provides you with a much better understanding of the people around you and, more specifically, what they need from you. The framing of the feedback is the secret ingredient.”
Say that you have someone working for you that is a micromanager.
The s*** sandwich, “You’re great...but you micromanage your people...and don’t forget you are great.” will be alibied, dismissed, and ineffective. Non-feedback feedback isn’t an option. Straight talk will be rejected.
The trick is this.
Depersonalize that feedback. Make it about what the team needs from them, not what you need to change. This could translate to, “the team needs to be able to make mistakes. That’s how you develop your next in line. Find a project where you can give them room to experiment and see what happens.”
No personalization, no fault, no recrimination. But the same effect.
The new habit begins to form. The trick has happened. Jo Pro would be proud.
When you hear the word "chocolate," what comes to mind?
We ask our clients this all the time. Some say "candy," some say "cake," and some say "labs" (as in the dog). Now think about words like "strategy," "pivot," or "hybrid work," and think about how many different directions you can go. Discuss these words with your colleagues, and the possibilities become endless.
In 2013, fassforward co-founder and CEO Rose Fass released her first book, "The Chocolate Conversation: Lead Bittersweet Change, Transform your Business.” ¹
It was based on a concept that Rose and co-founder Gavin McMahon developed since they opened the doors to fassforward in 2001, that: "everything regarding leadership, the market leadership of your company, followership, and change happens in the conversation.” ²
Chocolate conversations occur when colleagues talk past each other, but think they are on the same page.
Rose has just released her 2nd book, The Leadership Conversation: Make Bold Change One Conversation at a Time. And the timing is perfect. With the increased complexity of this new hybrid world and the significant changes in the way we communicate, chocolate conversations are more rampant than ever.
In the 90s, we communicated in person or on the phone; pagers were cutting edge, while email was still in its infancy. Phone booths blanketed every city block.
In 2013, when “The Chocolate Conversation” was published, Apple introduced the iPhone 5, and for the first time, more than half of American adults owned a smartphone³. Our in-person conversations declined as communications via smartphone, email and text increased. Phone booths started to disappear.
Businesses adapted to customers' preferences for digital communications. A 2013 survey showed that live chat registered the highest satisfaction levels for any customer service channel at 73%, compared with 61% for email and 44% for phone.⁴
By January 2020, digital dominated our communication. Out of a global population of 7.7 billion people, 5.19 billion people were using mobile phones, 4.5 billion people were using the internet, and 3.8 billion people were using social media. ⁵
Then COVID happened.
The trend toward digital communications accelerated to warp speed. Work meetings, family get-togethers, birthday parties, and even funerals took place digitally. As our digital communications exploded, so too did the number of chocolate conversations.
The three main ingredients of chocolate conversations are worldviews, standards, and concerns:
Chocolate conversations usually occur when we are unaware of these three ingredients.
Back-to-back meetings are now the norm with little, if any, break in between. As a result, we usually jump right into the subject at hand, which we refer to as "managing the work." Rarely do we allow time to share our worldview or talk about standards. Concerns rarely surface in these meetings; when they do, people seldom step back and ask what's behind the concern.
Two-way conversations, whether in-person, on video, or the phone, provide the best opportunities to unwrap a chocolate conversation.
We can ask real-time questions about a point of view and better understand worldviews. Standards can be defined and concerns can be raised. We are more likely to provide context and background when having a two-way conversation. The best discussions always leave time for questions. Back-and-forth interactions that offer the opportunity to dig deeper are the best ways to avoid chocolate conversations.
These opportunities disappear when we communicate via email, text, or IM.
Like meetings, the messages in our inboxes seem to multiply daily.
The time required to read and respond to emails feels like an additional full-time job. In a recent survey of 1500 professionals, 16% claimed they consistently fail to keep on top of their emails. 30% meanwhile, claim they lose sleep because of the number of emails they receive each day, with an average of 651 unread messages waiting in their inbox. ⁶
Emails quickly lead to passive-aggressive, judgmental, and dismissive behaviors. It's easier to express anger or frustration when hiding behind our keyboards. If you can't have a conversation and need to resort to email, ask yourself: would I say this if I was looking someone in the eyes and getting a real-time response? Or my favorite from my wall street days: would I be comfortable if the Wall Street Journal published this email?
A client recently sent me an email chain between her head of engineering and head of sales that consisted of 26 back and forths over three days. The exchange escalated to unprintable words. It was a classic chocolate conversation, and it permanently scarred their relationship. A phone call or video chat on day 1 would have saved them time, anguish, and their relationship.
How often do we call someone, get their voicemail, hang up, and then send a text?
Ever stop to think how inefficient that is? But the reality is that people check their text messages much more frequently than voicemails. For Millennials and Gen Z’ers, it has been their primary form of communication since they received their first cell phone (which, on average, is age 10). A recent survey revealed that 74% of Millennials prefer communicating digitally.⁷
This hit home for me when I hired a young analyst in my last job on wall street.
We had an open trading desk, and in the interest of mentoring him, I positioned him at a desk across from mine. The only thing separating us was our four large computer screens. His first day on the job, I welcomed him and said if he had any questions, just ask. About 20 minutes later, he had a question, but rather than asking, he IM’ed me.
Texting, like emails, exacerbates passive-aggressive behavior, limits emotion, and emphasizes speed and brevity over clarity.
All of these factors create digital chocolate conversations.
The great news is that we only need to connect on a human level.
Pick up the phone, set up a video chat, or ideally, have an in-person conversation.
We all need human interaction or what we call “touch.” We just need it to different degrees, as my colleague Frank Mazza explains. Touch is at the core of who we are as human beings; it creates bonds and connectivity that digital interactions cannot. It allows us to understand each other in more profound ways.
A few years ago, HotBlack Coffee in Toronto defied the growing trend of coffee shops and celebrated NOT offering Wi-Fi service. Jimson Bienenstock, CEO of HotBlack, explained, "It's about creating a social vibe. We're a vehicle for human interaction, otherwise, it's just a commodity."
Mr. Bienenstock understood what a 1965 study of 7,000 men and women in California showed. "People who were disconnected from others were roughly three times more likely to die during the nine-year study than people with strong social ties," John Robbins explained in his book on health and longevity, “Healthy at 100.”⁸
The notable takeaway from the book is that social connectedness was the primary factor in survival. Connection exceeded other factors like people's age, gender, health practices, or physical health status. The study found that "those with close social ties and unhealthful lifestyles (such as smoking, obesity and lack of exercise) lived longer than those with poor social ties but more healthful living habits." However, not surprisingly, "people with both healthful lifestyles and close social ties lived the longest of all."
The social connection that helps us live longer also helps us to avoid digital chocolate conversations. When we have one-on-one conversations and connect personally, we are more likely to share our worldviews, standards, and concerns.
Here are six ways to avoid digital chocolate conversations:
In this new world of hybrid work, human connection has never been more important. We need to make extra effort to replace the old water cooler/hallway conversations. Schedule regular one-on-one conversations with team members weekly, bi-weekly or at the least monthly, and schedule quarterly one-on-ones with different colleagues in other areas.
When an email you are writing, or an email chain you are on, is getting too long, pick up the phone. If an in-person conversation or video call is possible, even better. Two-way communication enables context for worldviews and standards to be understood, and concerns to be raised. Questions can be asked and confusion addressed real time.
When you start a meeting, take time to connect personally, rather than diving right into the work. Start conversations by asking your colleague, "how are you/your family doing?", "Did you have a good weekend?", "I know your dog had surgery. Is she doing all right?" When we connect personally, we better understand how people see the world, their standards, and what causes them concern.
After taking time to connect personally, provide context for the subject that you want to discuss. Take time to explain how your worldview shaped your perspective on the subject. Give some background about other meetings/conversations you have had that pertain to this work.
At the start of the meeting, encourage colleagues to offer questions, concerns, and what needs clarification. Too often, we only leave time to explain whatever we need to explain (the solution we are trying to solve, the task we need accomplished, the problem we are trying to address). Before the meeting ends, make sure everyone feels heard.
Finally, there is no better way to ruin a conversation than by being on a device while talking to someone. This has become much more prevalent on video calls. When you think you are subtly checking email or texts on a video call, it is obvious to everyone. Give the person your undivided attention, and give yourself a break from your emails and texts.
The advent of the internet, email, texting, and social media introduced a new opportunity for misinterpretation and misunderstanding. COVID-19 accelerated the trend towards these digital forms of communication, which in turn, increased the number of chocolate conversations.
Chocolate conversations are detrimental to our relationships, personal well-being, productivity, and success. The great thing is that returning to our roots of human connection is the key to addressing this challenge.
In this new hybrid world, we will all benefit by taking the time to connect and understand each other's worldviews, standards, and concerns.
Hungry for more? Order your copy of The Leadership Conversation on Amazon or read more about Rose and her new book on the leadershipconversationbook.com.
You can also snag a copy of her first book, The Chocolate Conversation.
Some chocolates come in a box. Chocolate Conversations simply keep you from thinking out of the box. Other chocolates come in a wrapper. But when executives, managers and support staff don’t know how to unwrap Chocolate Conversations, the taste is more bitter than sweet.
There’s a candy dish in our office coffee room filled with dark chocolate squares and peanut butter cups.
I love the dark squares. The peanut butter cups are usually the staff’s chocolate of choice. They can have them; I’ll pass on those. But one day, my dark squares were gone! I was choco-crazed and let everyone know it. They looked baffled.
Apparently, it wasn’t ever clearly expressed by me or Shannon, responsible for chocolate inventory control that, “Okay everyone, here’s a candy dish and it’s going to be filled with different kinds of chocolate. Let it be known that the dark chocolate squares are only for the boss and she expects them to be there when she hits the dish. You can eat whatever other kind of chocolate you want, but keep your paws off those dark chocolate squares.”
Everyone has them—in business and in personal relationships. Chocolate Conversation is the code name for important exchanges that get misinterpreted and result in unintended consequences. Consuming too many Chocolate Conversations, like eating too much chocolate, leaves you feeling queasy.
Failing to challenge assumptions. Failing to take the time to have complete conversations. Failing to make sure your message is heard as you intended it. These factors all contribute to the Chocolate Conversations that leave communications in meltdown mode.
Chocolate conversations contain three ingredients: Worldviews, Standards and Concerns.
A Worldview is a set of beliefs we hold about ourselves—and even the world—based on our experiences. These perceptions shape the picture we carry around in our minds.
Standards are rules and guidelines that inform how we act in different situations. These are developed through our experiences and interactions with others over a lifetime. Our standards become our expectations. “Where are my chocolate squares?” When expectations are not met, we’re disappointed.
Concerns arise from information filtered through our worldviews and standards. When we’re disappointed we complain. A complaint is an expressed concern, and underneath every complaint is an unmet need.
In my office, at the worldview level, we all like chocolate. Yet our standards are different. Dark Chocolate Squares for me. Peanut Butter Cups for others. By not clarifying how I felt about my stash in the candy dish, I set up a standard no one was aware of and expressed an unmet need that caught everyone off guard.
Misunderstandings and different points of view that result from Chocolate Conversations lead to misdirection, poor execution and loss of opportunity. Not clarifying a Chocolate Conversation can lead to failed mergers and relationships—in both business and life.
We need to change the conversation.
You’re probably thinking, “What are you talking about? I’m a savvy business executive. I know how to say what I want.”
You’re a seasoned communicator. You’re capable of conveying corporate missions, marketing plans and marching orders to any size audience—in person or in PowerPoint… via email or conference call… at a meeting or an event.
So, how come what you intend to happen as a result of your conversations, too often, doesn’t happen? Why wasn’t your vision transformed into reality? Where did things fall short in reaching—or even getting closer to—your goal?
Chances are, you’re conducting Chocolate Conversations, which are the wrong conversations to have if you want to get anywhere, or get anything done.
If you crave a solution for Chocolate Conversations, substitute the word ‘Leadership’ for ‘Chocolate.’
Now you’re ready for a Leadership Conversation. How many different interpretations would people in your company have about what makes or defines a good leader?
Don’t stop there! How many different standards surface when leaders of your company put new strategies or change initiatives into motion?
Leaders can’t afford to ignore Chocolate Conversations. For example, at the worldview level, a healthcare plan that’s affordable, inclusive and available to everyone sounds pretty good. Who wouldn’t want that? But when you get down to how that plan impacts certain age groups, benefits, and individuals obligated to participate, people’s standards kick in and ‘pretty good’ suddenly doesn’t seem so good anymore.
When people’s standards aren’t met, concerns bubble up. Before you know it, concerns are being expressed from all directions. All these concerns are declaring an unmet need.
Think beyond a particular worldview to how things will play out. Verbalize standards and address any concerns right from the start, or as soon as they surface. Take the time to have complete conversations. Make sure your message is heard as you intended it. Then, watch how things actually start moving along faster and pushing you closer to your intended outcome.
Like any kind of chocolate, it’s impossible to completely avoid Chocolate Conversations. But being aware of what causes them will help you cut down on them.
Your leadership—and the change you are driving—depends on it.
Hungry for more? Order your copy of The Leadership Conversation on Amazon or read more about Rose and her new book on the leadershipconversationbook.com.
You can also snag a copy of her first book, The Chocolate Conversation.
How many times in 2022, have you started a thought with the phrase “How do I do this…?” or “How do I do that…?”
If the ‘this’ or ‘that’ in question was about either leadership or storytelling, then we hope that during 2022, fassforward’s weekly ‘How to…’ articles have helped. To round-off the year, we’ve asked our team of leadership coaches to review which articles they’ve found themselves recommending the most during 2022.
Fassforward is the ‘How’ company, with content and courses addressing practical questions about leadership and communications. Our website is there to help answer the type of ‘How to…’ questions business leaders and communicators of all levels occasionally find themselves asking.
Each of our coaches has chosen the articles they feel have most met a challenge or a need business leaders have seen during 2022. Their choices range from how to manage performance through to how perfectionists can get themselves out of the weeds — declaring victory and moving on.
From all of us, we wish you a happy holiday season, and look forward to continuing to help you answer those how-to’s throughout 2023.
“I send this to clients because it tackles an issue I’ve discussed with so many of them: executing effectively on their strategy. It defines terms that are often used interchangeably: vision, mission and goals, and ties them to successfully executing a strategy. Finally it provides a simple 4-part test to see if your strategy is on the right track.”
Executing Strategy — How to get your strategy understood and actioned.
“This is an excellent breakdown of why change can sometimes make us feel like we’re spiralling out of control — especially when those changes are rapid. Being able to focus on positive outcomes means you maintain forward momentum and at the same time build alignment and autonomy on your team. This article gives you the blueprint for moving through change, and hitting your outcome.”
All Change — How to rethink how we lead through change.
“This one is repeatedly mentioned as a favorite of my clients — “Do something. Declare victory. Move on.” It’s an approach that is great for perfectionists that get stuck in the weeds. It's also good for those who struggle to feel they have accomplished anything, and as a boost for team morale.”
Move on — How to develop a rhythm for agile work.
“These three create a series around the difference between leading and managing. Leadership is about relationships and having the right conversations with your people. Managing is all about the work. In other words we don't manage people, we lead people. In Touch Task it speaks to leading people the way they want to be led. In Judgement Day 1 and 2 it talks about having the right process for managing performance. When you find the right balance between the two you are well on your way to leading a high performance team.”
Touch Task — How do I lead people?
Judgement Day — How to manage performance
Judgement Day II — How to manage performance
“I use this piece with clients as an introduction to our thinking patterns. It breaks out how the patterns show up, and how clients can begin to notice these responses in themselves and others. When we understand how we think, we can understand how we show up, respond, and initiate action, as well as expanding our thinking and leading.”
Thinking Patterns — How you think, act, and lead.
Children instinctively know all the tricks. They know there has to be pace. They know that somewhere in the woods there must be a big bad wolf. And above all they know size matters.
Whether ogre-huge or Thumbelina-tiny, children pay attention to scale.
Children understand that manipulating size in storytelling is essential to hitting a story’s objective. Seeking praise for achievements at school, the achievement will be stretched. Avoiding a telling-off for something naughty, the crime will be reduced. This shrink and grow effect lingers into adult storytelling, but only when the storyteller is in the pub. Consider the classic fisherman’s tale of the one “that got away”. The mythic fish described in terms so florid they’d make an advertising executive blush.
In business storytelling however, we forget this shrink and grow ability. This is ironic. Arguably, the business presentation is where we need it most.
Schools and apprenticeships hammer into us the idea that truth must be served unvarnished and facts straight-up. This strips words of color and flavor and texture. It stops us bringing scale to a subject.
Opportunities or threats, when presented purely with facts, become 2D cutouts.
There’s three vital questions to ask. What do I want the audience to feel? What do I want the audience to know? And what do I want the audience to do?
In each question, there’s a role for scale.
How powerfully do you want them to feel something? If action is needed, and needed now, then you want them to feel that opportunity or threat in its fullest force. If however, your goal is for the audience to leave with a quiet sense of reassurance (in other words, leave you alone to get on with the job), then the knob marked ‘scale’ needs adjusting to its lowest setting.
How big or small do you want to paint the subject for the audience? Depending on how you frame scale, small appears big and vice versa.
How big or small do you want the audience to perceive your requested actions to be. Whether as a walk in the park or a space shot to Mars, it all depends on your use of scale.
The good news is that it’s easier than you might think. You just need to know which cake to eat, and which bottle to drink.
Shrink and stretch are two wonderfully invisible techniques for bringing scale. This invisibility comes from the fact that they are simple word substitutions.
For example, let’s request a time extension on a project. Is it a ‘modest’ request, or an ‘exceptional’ one?
This triggers something called the Anchoring Effect. Even if people in the audience hear the request and think “Wow, that’s big!”, they remain anchored to the adjective ‘modest’. A certain amount of cognitive dissonance ensues.² This gives you the chance to make your case even in front of opponents who want the deadline sooner rather than later.
We don’t pay enough attention to our adjectives. We get taught to “...keep it factual”. Chosen adjectives however make the difference between success and failure.
We also fail to pay enough attention to anchoring. In our quest to keep things ‘factual’ we leave the field wide open for others to frame things before we do. This is a mistake. Much better to set your own anchor on how topics are viewed, than to let others do it for you.
AutoCorrect follows a similar idea, but overtly. It’s the flashy stage-magic cousin to the more subtle Shrink and Stretch. It works most effectively when trying to make something seem larger.
With Shrink and Stretch you take one adjective and quietly replace it with another — either bigger or smaller, depending on your goal. With Autocorrect, you allow both adjectives to be seen at once.
First use the lesser adjective. Then pause, look thoughtful for a beat, before verbally backing-up to stomp all over the weaker adjective and replacing it with a stronger one.
For example: “I’m really pleased with these results. No. Scratch that! I’m absolutely thrilled with these results.”
This verbal backing-up is why Autocorrect only really works when spoken out loud. In written form it looks a little odd.
These two techniques remind me of the film-makers’ craft. Scale is all about how you arrange the lenses!
It’s easiest to explain with an analogy. Imagine a telescope. Pick up that telescope, place the small end to your eye and point the fat end at a distant object. What happens? The distant object looks bigger. (Duhhhh!)
Now flip the telescope over and place the fat end to your eye and look at the distant object out of the small end. What happens now? The distant object looks even more distant and tiny that it did to the naked eye.
We achieve that same telescopic effect with words. I have a real-life example from a presentation I once heard given about the benefits of mobile working. This was at the dawn of mobile computing and some 20 years before Covid work-from-home. The speaker was describing the financial savings a company could make by closing its office space and moving to work-from-home.
“You’ll save on all this office-space. You’ll save on paying for the parking garages. You can save on the equipment, and renewing office furniture. Hell, you can even save on buying toilet paper!”
The sales-person did not get the deal. He’d taken the client down a series of lenses from “Office-space” (Super big), to “Furniture” (Medium-Small) and finally arrived at “Toilet paper” (Super super small). And that’s where the clients mind stayed. Had the sales person reversed that sequence though (and maybe swapped ‘toilet paper’ with ‘office consumables’), then the client would instead have seen an ever-widening plethora of savings!
When offering a list of reasons, payoffs, costs, or even adjectives, pay attention to the sequence they’re offered in. Sequence small to big, and the end point seems huge. Sequence in the other direction, and its “Honey, I shrunk the kids”.
Humanize brings scale by putting words into objects that can’t (or generally don’t) speak.
There’s one form of this that I can guarantee you’ve heard in a presentation, and that’s “The data says…”
Close your eyes for a second. Give form to what this spokesperson called ‘the data’ actually looks like. When I do this exercise I see an especially boring person, all in gray, and quite possibly with a pocket protector. They also have an irritatingly nasal voice.
Is that the voice you want your presentation to have?
Of course, in reality, ‘the data’ cannot speak. It’s 1’s and 0’s. We have, however, decided to anthropomorphise ‘the data’ by giving it the human attribute of voice. What alternatives could we substitute for ‘the data’? Depending on your message, the possibilities range from ‘the customers’, to ‘the market’, to ‘the environment’, and all the way up to ‘the planet’. ⁵
Decide what sort of voice your inanimate object is using. The tone could range all the way from ‘hinting’ through to ‘crying out’. It all depends on what you want the audience to feel, and how urgently you want them to feel it.
Scale is distance. Scale is size. Scale is weight. In other words — scale is perspective. It’s the element that takes flat 2D cut-out facts, and brings them to life.
Wouldn’t that be a great thing to be able to add to your next presentation?
Ready, set, go.
How quickly can you build social capital? With it, you have the fuel to drive success in your new job. Without it, there could be a failure to launch.
…but how often, on joining a new company, have we heard this instead?
" I came in on the first day. The company had a two-day onboarding program. HR came in. They did a team-building activity and gave a history of the organization. Several company leaders came in to welcome us and give advice on how to be successful.
A key theme in all of this was learning how things get done and building a network quickly. The comedy (and tragedy) though is that once in your real job, there’s no help in understanding who to connect with or what matters.
In fact, day-to-day work conspires against building a network. You’re stuck in your silo, have to produce results quickly, have a hard time getting people’s attention to know who to network with, how to build trust, and on and on.…”¹
In a recent article Social Capital, I spoke about this; how to help new employees build their networks.
Leveraging networks is the most impactful way new employees can perform and be fully accepted by their organization.
But it takes years to establish those relationships. Job one on day one is to build a set of relationships with managers, subject matter experts, peers, and other newcomers throughout the company.
Research shows that replicating the network of an established employee in a strong culture typically takes three to five years.²
In the era of hybrid work this has become more difficult. We have learned from the pandemic that most employees can be more productive away from their work address. But can we say that about a new employee?
As a new employee it’s easy to feel you’re on the outside looking in; not only disconnected from co-workers, but missing the social life that creates meaning and connections with the organization.
In her article “What to do when you have to onboard yourself,” Amy Drader believes, regardless of whether face to face or virtual, that it’s a daunting task to understand what tools and information you need to be effective. More challenging is how to integrate into a company culture. To cultivate these relationships, you need to meet the right people, who will not only inform you about the work but shed light on unwritten rules, social norms, and office politics.
The faster you understand this, the faster you add value to your team and feel confident in your job.³
Understanding the formal vs. the informal network.
Employees need to understand the existing patterns of interactions amongst each other, rather than merely the formal org chart.
This idea was introduced in 2017, under the umbrella of “organizational network analysis”.⁴
Typical onboarding processes focus on integrating new employees into your company.
This involves helping them become familiar with their workspace, job responsibilities, company employment policies, and the company’s history. While these practices are important they do little to build networks. For instance, the typical hierarchical org-chart, used to help new employees navigate the company, offers little help in promoting individual performance or effectiveness.
On the other hand, making visible the relationships between individuals and how information flows, or how decisions are made, jumpstarts productivity. An example of this would be knowing who are the people skilled at making introductions, and getting things done; something that here at fassforward, we call ‘bridging and brokering’. Chances are these individuals may not stand out in a traditional org-chart. However, if they were visible to the new employee - think how it would change the focus on who they would want in their network.
Rather than focusing on the traditional hierarchy within the organization, the focus would shift to connecting with the people who could help them quickly build productivity and influence.
A network is only as helpful as the people within it.
Think of yourself as Hans in the illustration above. You want to meet Carol and Ben because both provide value to the business and ultimately to you. The diagrams below suggest a different strategy for developing your network. Each illustration begins with an inner circle, people closest to you, and reaches to the outer circle, people you want to know.
Here are five views of starting and cultivating your network.
One Final Thought
Adam Grant describes in his book “Givers versus Takers”; takers are people who are trying to get as much as possible from others, while contributing as little as they can in return. On the other hand givers actually prefer to be on the contributing end of an interaction.
Grant’s research supports the fact that the way to success is by giving – not taking! Therefore, whenever you meet interesting people at networking events, to follow-up and start giving to the relationship, do what Grant calls the 5-minute favor, which is asking yourself, “What value can I add for this person by spending five minutes or less?”
When you have your answer, do exactly that.⁵
A true story of the big job, with Tate, Pat, and fake names.
Tate and Pat were both vice presidents, reporting to the Chief Information Officer. Tate ran application development. Pat ran infrastructure. Tate had started his career as a programmer, Pat as a consultant.
The CIO retired. Both were up for the big job. Pat got it.
Tate didn’t understand. He had more experience. He led a larger group. He had phenomenal performance reviews and was well-liked by other business leaders. He was more technically expert on the more critical systems that ran the company. Pat, in his view, had much less expertise.
Tate didn’t understand why he was passed over.
What Tate didn’t realize is that the world doesn’t operate on technical merit. Being the expert, having a Ph.D. in your specialist subject, matters less and less the further you progress in your career.
At the top level of an organization, it’s just as much about who you know and who knows you as it is about what you know.
The first is the technical conversation. This is about the work. It’s about what you know. It’s where you have credibility and expertise. This is what you are hired for. It’s where you earn respect.
Think of the technical conversation as “I know how to...”
The second conversation is the social conversation. It’s who you know. This is about people. It’s how you develop a network. That network gives you the ability to marshal resources and get things done, both in your team and across the organization.
The social conversation is “I know who to...”
The last conversation, the one that Tate was deaf to, was the political conversation. This is how you gain influence. How you get a seat at the table. This is about who knows you. This is the ‘polish’ that Tate saw in Pat. That polish goes by many names: gravitas, executive presence, charismatic leadership.
It’s mastery of the political conversation.
Pat had this in spades. They wielded outsize influence in the organization. While everyone in the IT organization knew—and respected—Tate, everyone in the business knew Pat. Tate would stand his ground. If he believed something was right, he would argue for it, sometimes leaving bruised egos and chips on shoulders.
Pat would never do that.
Pat built and nurtured relationships carefully. Pat would argue for certain things but ultimately balanced a technical perspective with other agendas in the business.
This ability to balance the technical, social, and political conversation is what we call the leadership conversation. It’s the topic of Rose Fass’s second book, The Leadership Conversation. Make Bold Change, One Conversation At a Time.
If Tate had read that book, he would have been on an even playing field with Pat— instead of passed over. The leadership conversation shows you how to reframe a conversation, how to lead change in your business, and how to have deep, honest conversations with yourself and others.
That’s the moral of the story. Your work doesn’t speak for itself. The world is not a meritocracy. As you read the story of the big job, you may be wondering—am I more like Tate or Pat?
Have you ever felt like your ideas were not listened to? You weren’t part of a decision? You sometimes get more drill-down than you need, or people resist your ideas? You don’t get the help and support you feel you need?
You need to change the type of conversation you are having.
If you want to find out where your conversations land today, and some ideas on where to focus your conversation, take a quick survey.
It takes five minutes and will show you how you frame your conversations.
Tate didn’t read the book but did have a conversation with Rose Fass, the book’s author. Pat went on to another, bigger job in a different organization. Tate had taken Rose’s advice and developed conversational muscle in the political and social spheres.
Tate got the job.
When was the last time you heard someone say: “I wish that speech had been longer.”
I’m guessing, never.
Holiday time is here again. Party time is here again. Which means... speech time is here. Again. With an open question as to who dreads this more; the average speaker or the average audience.
I’m guessing both.
How can you turn pain into pleasure? The dread into delight? The answer:
Be brief. Be brief. Be brief.
Roosevelt was right. The secret to a good speech is brevity, and brevity is tough. Brevity needs thought and planning. As Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher, put it: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”¹
Here are some time-saving tips to promote brevity.
A holiday speech has one short, three-part purpose. Hello... thank you... let’s celebrate. It’s basically a “Hi, and thanks for… all this year’s work / coming to the party / joining us in celebration.” (Edit as appropriate). Leave all the provocation, cautionary tales, visioneering, preaching, and eulogizing for another time. It must also entertain.
When we create a holiday speech, however, we go beyond this. We’re in front of an audience. We want to look prepared. We want to seem informed. We want to seem together.
That can hurt us. We pack too much in. We overtalk. We succumb to the Curse of Knowledge: ‘You know too much, and you’re way too passionate.’
We worry that if we don’t show that knowledge and share that passion, the audience might think we actually don’t care.
The secret to a good speech is planning. Keep it tight, write it ahead, and include a couple of techniques from rhetoric that packs plenty of punch into a small package.
Holiday speeches bring people together, metaphorically and literally.
What will everyone agree on? That common cause needs to link to the event you’re speaking at and set the tone for your speech. It can refer to past or future, emotion or fact — the only thing that matters is that everyone nods sage agreement when you drop it. Find that statement and stick it to the very start of your speech.
You have now united your audience. First goal gained.
Audiences like to know what’s coming.
Now you have everyone’s attention and goodwill, you need to share a) what your message is, b) how many sections you’re going to say it in, and; c) how long it’s going to take.
Be clear on what you want everyone to remember from your speech. If you can only land one main point, then what is it?
How will you structure that point? Is it one big statement, or are there three subpoints you need to bring out? If so, state them in short, pithy mentions: “...there are three things I want to say.”
As you list those sub-points, use your fingers. Literally. Count the points off on your fingers as you state them… Point 1… Point 2… Point 3… Listing structure in this way helps you remember what you want to say.
Your audience is now happily in receive mode, and you know where you’re going. Second goal gained.
You’ve got everyone looking in the same direction, and have a clear structure for your speech. Now it's time to decorate.
If your holiday structure was a holiday tree, that tree needs trimming.
My friend and colleague Gavin McMahon often points to the behavior of nervous speakers — they go into ‘safe mode.’ A call back to the old days of Microsoft Windows, when your PC was having problems. Safe mode, with all the bells and whistles switched off, is stable and secure, but appealing it is not.
Get out of safe mode. Scatter some lights.
When you write down your speech (and as part of your preparation, I do suggest you write down your speech), look for where you can add vivid adjectives. Look for where you can add a little muscle to your verbs. Safe mode is gray. This is meant to be a holiday speech.
Bring the holiday color and spice that make people sit forward and smile.
Third goal gained. The audience go wild!
Five minutes.
Five minutes is enough to deliver your message, pack a punch, spread good cheer, then add surprise and delight by sitting down.
The average person speaks at 125 - 150 words per minute, so your five-minute speech needs to aim for approximately 750 words.
In other words, the length of this article.
Happy holidays.
I have a first law of presenting: “Never underestimate the ability of your audience… to completely miss the point!” I have a second law of presenting: “Never underestimate the ability of the audience to completely miss the point!” And I have a third law of presenting: “Never underestimate the ability of the audience to COMPLETELY MISS THE POINT!”
Audiences are wonderful. They bring warmth, bring energy, bring their own insights… but only when they’re listening. And here’s the sad fact — they’re not listening very often.
Humans are designed to be distractible. One minute we’re listening, and the next we’re wondering if we left the iron on.
The audience mind is a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party of detours and sidetracks that you — the speaker — need to penetrate.
And let’s assume your audience is remote. For a remote audience, sitting alone in their room, that Tea Party becomes a full-on food-fight. Everything from the ability to look at other screens, through to the dog barking, and that weird smell of burning. Did I leave the iron on?
An easy fix is available, and it’s an ancient one. It’s the tool of rhetoric.
Rhetoric is a magic-spell book. This is how I’ve regarded it for years. It’s packed with tips and techniques for making messages sing, dance, and occasionally morph. As one Roman orator put it, rhetoric is the ‘hidden dart’ that lets words pierce the audience mind, regardless of distractions.¹
Here are a few repetitive tools to make sure messages land, regardless of how far the audience mind might wander.
Effective communication achieves two things. It frames the way people see the world, and moves them to action. Sounds simple enough. Simple that is, until you remember those people are in a roar of distractions.
For a message to stick, and for a message to work, it needs to be driven home with the subtlety of a jackhammer. It needs to be repeated.
What’s the one thing you want everyone repeating as they leave the room or close the screen?
It’s often hard to tie this down when planning a presentation. Repetition means you have to nail your key message. You must be laser focused on what it is you want to repeat.
Without awareness of key message, repetition gives you pretty soundbites, but not much else.
Repetition emphasizes a point. Studies show it also makes your message more believable.
The human mind is lazy. This is no bad thing. Pound for pound, your brain is the most energy consuming chunk of meat in your whole body. Anything the brain can do to save energy, it will. One of those things is recognise things it’s met before, and use that familiarity to process information more rapidly.
This especially applies to words.
The more something is repeated, the more we become inclined to believe it. Cognitive scientists call this the Illusory Truth Effect. In his book “Win Bigly”, the author Scott Adams (he of the Dilbert cartoons) explores this phenomenon and how it’s used and abused in politics.
How does this apply when we’re presenting?
We’ve all been in other people’s presentations. We know it’s tough to maintain concentration on what the speaker is saying, no matter how hard we might try. The poor old brain burns fuel just trying to hold position and not drift off. If you’re the speaker, anything you can do to save a little of that power-drain is to be encouraged.
Can you have too much repetition?
If you were making the keynote speech at a party conference and looking for that thunderous standing ovation, then the answer would be that ‘too much’ would be an impossibility. If using repetition to get your point across during a regular business presentation, then there is a magic number…
Three.
Two repetitions aren’t enough to establish a pattern. Use more than four however and the fact you’re using a ‘technique’ becomes overt. This is meant to be a hidden dart rather than a spear to the back of the head.
So — repetition is a good thing. How to use it? Think of repetition as one of those summer recipes for sauce. You’ve got a pile of fresh tomatoes and the question is how to flavor. Here’s four of my favorites:
“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.” — Humphrey Bogart in ‘Casablanca’
First Word Repeats are everywhere. They’re in speeches. They’re in songs. They’re in poems. And that’s because they’re simple and punchy.
Take your key phrase, stick it at the front of the sentence, repeat three times. Job done.
“...see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” - Japanese proverb.
When you take a First Word Repeat but run it backwards, you get a Last Word Repeat — and it drives your message just as effectively.
Just like it’s forward facing cousin, this structure can be found all over the place, and often with more than three repetitions. A word of caution — when using this for a presentation, keep it to three. Four or more might sound great if you’re Bob Dylan, but not if you’re presenting at the all-staff meeting.
“History is ours and people make history.” — Salvador Allende, 1973
Moving up the rhetorical scale and getting just a little fancier, you can take the Front-Word and Last-Word repeats, and combine them to create a Front and Back.
This structure is more visible. It sounds a little more clever. This might sound like a good thing, but if you’re aim is to drive home a message without sounding like you’re using rhetoric, this structure needs to be used sparingly. In fact — for this particular one — just once.
“Bond, James Bond.” — Ian Fleming’s 007
A-B-A is a super-concentrate version of Front and Back. It’s structurally identical apart from the fact that it’s limited to just three words.
That compression produces a stiletto-knife of wordplay. It’s a short, sharp jab to the subconscious of the audience. You keyword is the ‘A’ element, and your adjective is the ‘B’ element. For example, if your message is about how your company is service oriented, then a super-simple A-B-A might sound like “Service. Comprehensive service.”
Think of this as being a sandwich where your key word is the bread and your adjective the flavorsome filling.
We all face a challenge — the world has never been noisier! When we need to deliver a message, that noise gives us a problem.
The Greeks and Romans had the same problem. Their noise was the literal din of the forum and the street-market. To cut through that noise, they developed the tool of rhetoric — simple word formulae to help your message hit its goal. At the heart of many of those techniques, sat the Swiss-Army knife of repetition.
2000 years later, it’s just as sharp.
I heard a conversation the other day.
A group of executives meeting, trying to figure out why their transformation plan was falling behind. One sentence stood out.
“It’s the run-the-business work. It gets in the way of our priorities.”
That’s more common than you might think.
You see it evident in big spreadsheets of priorities, with resources spread thinly across multiple rows. Competing requests for time. Or complex strategies that exist on PowerPoint but stall in reality.
This is a management question.
And all management is change management. At its essence, management applies limited resources, makes choices, and triages priorities. Management is the juggling of time.
Time is a fixed resource, and there is never enough of it.
This problem isn't going away; it’s getting more urgent. And it’s huge — this year alone, the business world will spend $4.4 trillion on transformation.
With change comes change fatigue.
Burnout, and its twin sister stress, run rampant. Employers then respond with wellness programs, education, counseling, and global reset days. These are all noble efforts — but smack of stable-door-bolting as the horse vanishes over the hill.
The root cause of stress and burnout is an overwhelming mix of workload, competing priorities, and unreasonable deadlines.
It’s time for a rebalance.
It’s time to sort out the work.
Critical work is the work of change.
Critical work improves things. It sets you up for the future. Without it, we would still be xeroxing memos, faxing change orders, or typing www before a website address.
Critical work can come in many forms, but the impetus is the same: once complete, the business is in a better position — more efficient, more effective, and more marketable.
Without critical work, there is no progress.
It takes work to improve work. Critical work can happen across the enterprise, for example, in large-scale transformation projects. It could occur in a team, rejigging a weekly staff meeting. Critical work can be individual, like learning to use a new piece of software.
All critical work requires you to set aside time.
Google famously ingrained critical work into its culture. This was the “20% time” rule. Sergey Brin and Larry Page wrote in their IPO letter, “we encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will benefit Google.”
This is critical work.
Core work keeps the lights on.
Core work is the production line. It runs the machine; the work which puts sales on the board and money in the till. It is the essence of what you do.
There is another type of work, though — busywork.
Busywork is neither core nor critical, and it accumulates over time.
Busywork is born from inertia. Busywork grows as an output of regular work, like cache files on your PC and paperwork on your desk. It’s that once-urgent quarterly report. No one reads it — and no one bothered to tell you. Busywork is the weekly meeting that could be monthly — but no one has changed the calendar.
Busywork is work you do because you did it yesterday.
Busywork doesn’t fundamentally improve the business. It doesn’t bring in money, service customers, or improve the product. But it’s work, and it sucks up time. You may even feel a calorie-free sense of accomplishment at the end of the day once you have completed it.
You need to get rid of it. It gums up the gears of the business.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s current CEO, recently called for a simplicity sprint. It’s an effort to crush busywork and refocus on what is core and critical.
Pichai asked employees to help “create a culture that is more mission-focused, more focused on our products, more customer-focused. We should think about how we can minimize distractions and really raise the bar on both product excellence and productivity.”
Remove the busywork; it gives you precious time back.
As a business, this might be exiting a market segment that isn’t profitable for you or sunsetting a product that costs you too much to maintain. It might be a finance team that stops doing a certain type of reporting. Or, as a meeting owner, you shift the meeting cadence from weekly to monthly.
You now have some precious time back.
But we still have the problem: “It’s the run-the-business work (Core). It gets in the way of our priorities. (Critical)” This is the essential change dilemma. What can you do?
Salesforce, Apple, Google, 3M, and Atlassian; all companies that put a premium on innovation. Across the organization, they also allocate more time to critical work. It’s a part of their DNA that helps them lead their respective markets. The value of critical work and the time needed for it is built in.
It’s autonomous critical work.
It takes an appetite for risk to push decision-making about what to work on down to the individual level. Google is the most famous company to do this but wasn’t the first. For years, 3M has run the 15% rule. William McKnight, 3M’s former chair, explained it as “encourag[ing] experimental doodling. If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need.”
Others have various forms of self-directed, critical work. Atlassian follows the 20% time rule. Facebook, Quora, and Dropbox all run hackathons.
Markets and businesses follow an S curve.
Businesses repeat that cycle of (re)start to scale to maturity. Each cycle is followed by a strategic inflection point, at which point the business will either transform, stagnate or decline.
That’s why there are all these digital (and other) transformation efforts — to avoid the slippery slope of decline and the morass of stagnation.
At that point, the business has to direct critical work. Prioritize reinvention over business as usual.
Think Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T during their 4G growth cycles — a relentless focus on their core business and operations, meeting consumer demand. Then the transition to 5G. Navigating the transition means, hopefully, a transformation in the business, new markets, new opportunities, and new growth. A bumpy transition of the strategic inflection point could signal stagnation or decline.
The transformation — the strategic inflection point — requires critical work. More, it requires aligned critical work, where the creative work of reinvention is pointed at a new North Star. Where big, formal transformation efforts drive structural change; and are supported by a changing of priorities, and the rethinking of critical work, at every level.
This changes the conversation.
From:
“It’s the run-the-business work. (Core) It gets in the way of our priorities (Critical).”
To:
“Remove the busywork. That lets us focus on our priorities (Critical Work), and that will take precedence over the run-the-business work.”
There's wisdom in children’s books.
When Winnie the Pooh uttered “I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.” he launched an armada of self-help ships. Legions of blogs and books celebrate Winnie’s wisdom courtesy of A.A. Milne. To me that boils down to being understood, being persuasive, and being expansive.
Let’s dig into being expansive.
To say, “I am a bear of very little brain...” expresses wonderful humility. It also shows — like all individuals who exhibit intellectual humility — that Winnie the Pooh is an expansive thinker. A leader.
Leaders who exhibit expansive thinking are open, curious, and experimental, like Winnie. This isn’t just how they think, but also how they encourage others to think.
Researchers Ian Church and Peter Samuelson investigate intellectual humility and expansive thinking as leadership traits. They confirm that those who exhibit humility in their approach are not only consistently high performers, but they inspire that performance in others.
When Pooh describes himself as ‘a bear of very little brain’, he’s creating a level playing field where those around him can share insights freely. In modern research parlance, the phrase that’s thrown around is psychological safety. For us laymen, psychological safety is a judgment-free zone. It allows us, and Pooh, and all his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood to bring their fullest selves to the party.¹
Pooh isn’t the first great thinker to do this. Intellectual humility, deliberately expressed as spoken form, has been around since the ancient Greeks and Romans. The godfathers of rhetoric recommended intellectual humility for anyone who wants to lead or persuade.
So, with absolute humility, may I humbly suggest a modest selection of rhetorical techniques that help speakers hurdle hubris.
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Many a speaker has started a presentation by saying, “Gosh — I don’t do this very often…” Yes — it sets a low bar, but it also frames the speaker as a plucky underdog (and audiences love a plucky underdog).
Pooh’s statement “I am a bear of very little brain…” is disarming modesty. In fact, Pooh is known for wise reflection and that immortal phrase ‘pondering’.
When we’re in meetings or conversations, especially with folks fond of long words or complex questions, Modesty is our best defense. Rather than disagree or retreat, modestly asking for further explanation creates a neat reversal. Often, it’s then the other party that finds themselves wrong-footed and retreating. There is defense in humility.²
We all have a burden of care to make sure we don’t innocently use those same long words against others. It’s surprisingly easy to do. Others are at neither their best nor most open when someone else makes has just made them feel stupid.
I had flu last week. It was dreadful.
Oh alright — I had a cold… definitely sniffly.
OK - OK!!!! — It was just a sniffle. Happy now?
The words we chose to describe things matter. They bring scale.
We all perceive the world through frames. These frames of perception dictate how we interpret the goal accomplished, or the challenge ahead. Those frames are built of adjectives.
Adjectives need careful choosing. Once something or someone is in a frame, it’s hard to move them out of it. We’re also likely to put ourselves into a frame. For example — that meeting in your schedule — the one you’re not looking forward to next week — how are you mentally referring to it? If you’re using adjectives dark with doom then you’re increasing your stress and decreasing the expansiveness of your thinking.
As humans we have acute radar for detecting threats — real or perceived. We then blow-up those threats beyond their true proportions. Threat flips our thinking from open and expansive to fixed and rigid.
When choosing words to support expansive thinking, keep them humble. Keep them small. Before reaching for that dramatic adjective, ask yourself if a more toned-down phrase might prove better.
Great big claims make audiences smell a rat.³ Appearing to boast is the opposite of humility. However, this does become a problem if those great big claims are actually true, and central to your case.
Even supported by evidence, powerful claims come off as self-aggrandizing. In a past life I was a Brand Manager. I had the luck to manage a brand that every year, would win the big prize at the annual industry awards ceremony. Naturally, this was something I wanted shouted from rooftops by the sales team. The problem however was how to do it. The regularity with which we won the trophy was starting to make prize less shiny and claim more showy. The answer, was to understate the achievement.
“... when it comes to product reliability, we’re not unknown for winning awards in that area.”
The line could be delivered a little coyly, almost as if embarrassed at the claim. A nice warm moment that subtly dropped a powerful sales message.
The secret to understatement is to use a “not, un…” combination. A fabulous restaurant for example, might tell you its ‘not unusual for diners to fall in love with our food’. A great achievement might be phrased as “...our results have not gone unnoticed.” When translated, these examples come out as “Customers RAVE about our food.” and “The press are going CRAZY about the share price!”
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Conceding a point never feels easy. It can however, turn the battle.
We like to win. We don’t like it when our viewpoints are challenged. Being strategically ready to concede to your opponent’s point though can be disarming. It also triggers the human instinct of reciprocity.
Reciprocity can be short-handed as “one good deed deserves another”. When we concede we make a positive gesture. That gesture generates a responding gesture from the other person. Agreeing with one of their points, increases the likelihood they will in turn agree with one of yours. And if, despite attempting reciprocity, you still find yourself brow-beaten, then you’re winning insight about if this individual is worth continuing to engage with. Or not.
Using this strategy requires you to be open, curious, and a great listener. Many a conversation is lost because we react to the 10% of the sentence we don’t agree with, at the expense of the 90% of the sentence that we actually do!
The line “a bear of very little brain” is about thinking, and thinking is central to everything we do. The more we’re aware of our thinking, the more conscious and expansive we become. Pooh doesn’t rush through life on autopilot. Pooh pauses. Pooh ponders. In doing so, Pooh is truly aware.
We can learn a lot from Pooh.
True story, with changed names to preserve the innocent.
Clive was a new CEO with a big vision. He was going to take his one-hundred-year-old company and drag it, kicking and screaming, into the twenty-first century.
His plan: heavy investment in a better, SaaSier mousetrap and a new business model to go with it. He and his company would take on the behemoth of the space: Bloomberg.
But Clive was increasingly frustrated.
He saw the future. He had buy-in from the board. And most importantly, he had a great new product waiting in the wings.
But he had no movement.
He couldn’t get from strategy to action. Every time he explained his vision and strategy to anyone outside of his inner circle, he would get reactions ranging from polite applause to bemused looks.
People carried on with the day-to-day business. No change.
Clive went on road shows. Clive used analogies to build excitement. He explained. He edicted. He cajoled. But, no dice. The very literal culture he was speaking to was confused. Every time Clive tweaked his tale, his audience thought he had changed his mind and changed the strategy.
They were confused, and inertia settled in.
Clive’s problem isn’t a new one; it’s a common one.
I get sent strategy decks all the time.
They are all the same. Dense PowerPoint with no wasted white space. An executive summary at the front that would have been better written in Word than on a PowerPoint slide. The words are shared: Purpose. Vision. Mission. Goals. Value(s). Principle(s). Digital, technology, and customer.
They are hard to read and more difficult to make sense of.
It’s no wonder, according to research by The Strategic Agility Project, that less than a third of executives and managers (28%) can list three of their company’s strategic priorities.
Even at the top, teams are disjointed. It’s not uncommon to agree on a set of goals or even agree on PowerPoint on how to execute those goals.
Strategy means change, and people don’t like it. They revert back to their center of gravity—to do what they did yesterday, to play it safe.
When the rubber of decision-making hits the road of real life, teams spin.
Would it not be a wonder if everyone understood the strategy? A holy grail if everyone worked towards it?
So why don’t they?
Throw in purpose, objective, and initiative, and you have a hexawhat of corporatese, a confusing cocktail of corporate jargon. Bureaucratic buzzwords immortalized on PowerPoint and passed from employee to employee.
There is no simplicity, no clarity, no narrative.
This is part of the mystique of strategy and planning. The goal of all strategy is to have people execute on it, yet it’s the first hurdle that strategy falls over. People don’t understand it, they can’t remember it, they don’t buy into it, so they revert back to what they did yesterday.
It’s why Clive didn’t get traction.
Strategy, mission, vision, goals, and purpose are all connected.
But how much effort do you put into connecting those dots—to translate strategy into something that people can clearly understand, remember, and act upon?
To connect those dots, you need to answer, for yourself and your team, the following questions.
Why are we doing this?
Where are we going?
What will we do?
How will we do it?
Why is the purpose. It gives us urgency and agency. It’s what motivates us and gets us energized and proud of our work.
Where is the vision. The clearer it is, the better it is. You want people to see themselves in that picture.
What is the mission. A why and a where give you a reason and something to move towards. The mission gives you specificity.
How is the strategy. All strategy is choice. Your strategy is a choice between left, right, and straight ahead. In making that choice, you begin to specify what you will not be doing.
This truism is a favorite of Rose Fass, author of the Leadership Conversation..
If people aren’t executing your strategy, culture and its cousin inertia have won. Your strategy rots on a set of PowerPoint slides.
There are four increasingly difficult tests for a strategy on the path to execution.
First, can people repeat it? You’re not looking for a verbatim repetition. You’re looking for people that can get up and tell the story throughout all levels of the organization. Just as everyone in the organization can repeat a joke or tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Each telling might be different, but the tenets and the punchline is the same.
Second, is the strategy translated through every level of the organization? Are people taking the strategic narrative and do they know how their work executes on the strategy? Do you see yourself as part of that future?
The third test: do people have “other work” — a day job before they can get to the strategy? If they do, your strategy has failed. Strategy is a choice. Strategy means sacrificing. It’s equally important to stop doing things as it is to start doing things. This means everything people are doing is, in some way, executing the strategy.
Finally, the fourth test. Is the work of your colleagues and other teams helping to execute the strategy? Is their work complementing and intersecting with yours?
Taken together, these four tests increase the likelihood of execution. Execution validates strategy.
Team Signal, or Team Noise. Which are you?
If you’ve listened to a radio crackle, you are familiar with signal-to-noise. The signal is the music you’re listening to. The noise is the hiss and the crackle. If you are too young for this analogy, signal is the video streaming in HD, noise is the pixelation when the video lags.
You get the same thing at work.
A tidal wave of communication coming at you. Invites. Texts. DMs. Thousands of emails and messages a week. A team of people to keep up to date and sync with. Projects to prioritize, meetings to schedule, work to pick up, and new colleagues to onboard.
No wonder burnout is on the rise.
Which is signal, which is noise?
Think about the last meeting you were in.
Not one you ran, but one you attended. Did you glaze out for a second there? Your mind wandered? You quickly checked a text or surreptitiously answered an email?
Yes? Read on.
It’s not easy. Do you think your meetings are better? Is everyone focused? Is there more signal than noise? Look at an email in your inbox.
Was it useful? Could you do something with it?
A signal passes three tests. First, it grabs your attention. Second, it’s useful to the consumer. It could be useful because it’s funny or factual. It may be uplifting or unusual or simply new or additional information. The third test is whether you can do something with it. That may be as simple as filing it away, mentally, for future use, “liking” it, or it may have a clear action that changes your work.
Now apply the same test to yourself.
You send out emails and texts. You run meetings.
Are they signal or noise?
Every conversation you have, every message you send, and every meeting you run, you have to try to pass those three tests—of attention, usefulness, and action.
This means that only two conversations matter. The ones that frame the way people see the world and the ones that move them to action. Everything else is just noise.
Framing is the art of shaping opinion.
A good frame grabs attention, adds to understanding, and changes perception. Take the dance of the real estate agent. You are looking to buy a house. You tell the real estate agent how many bedrooms, bathrooms, and other details. And then you name a price range.
The first house you’re shown will be above your top end.
Your agent is reframing the conversation. “Look, you can have all that you want in a wonderful location, but it will cost you a little more.”
Take the painting by French post-impressionist master Henri Martin. The work, an oil on canvas entitled Sur La Côte, is a painting of the Basque coastline running along the Bay of Biscay.
When it was exhibited at a Greenwich art gallery, the frame — literally — changed. If a contemporary collector visited, Sur La Côte was displayed in a modernist frame, making the piece look more contemporary. If the visitor was a period buyer, the painting was displayed in a French frame, making the piece look more traditional.
For a frame to work, it has to have a direct effect on your audience.
If you live in the US, it’s likely that you don’t care much about the relationship between Azerbaijan and Armenia because it doesn’t affect you. Deny all you like, but we all have egos, and we’re all narcissistic.
That means we put great stock in how this affects me.
Word choice matters. The right words put people on your side of the issue.
Pink Slime is a good example. If I said I put pink slime in your food, you wouldn’t want to eat it. Lean finely textured beef, on the other hand, sounds pretty tasty.
Inspire people.
This “inspiration” sounds difficult. A higher calling card of leadership. You might think, “some people can do it, I can’t.” Not true. It’s straightforward. To be inspired is to want to do something. It’s your second conversation—to move people to action. You want action from your audience. That action may be as simple as a smile, or as sophisticated as a sale.
Action is the goal of your story and the payoff to the presentation.
Unfortunately, most miss this. Instead, you open your mouth, speak, then trail off, circling around your idea. Or you might open up PowerPoint and mindlessly start to type.
The whole point is to move people—to move them to action.
Moving means feeling. Neuroscientist Donald Calne wrote, “The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.”
Reason leads to judgment, emotion leads to action.
The Action conversation has to have a strong emotional thread to move people. Relying on a rational argument or business case is a start, but it won’t get you across the finish line.
Action will come in three forms.
The first form is a concrete action. This could be the initiation of a project or the approval of a budget. It’s attainable and measurable, and your focus in that conversation is ensuring people understand it. You are probably speaking to people on your team—you have the credibility and authority to ask for the action.
Secondly, you have social or political action. In this case, you are not speaking to people on your team but to peers in other business units. You are asking them to lend their political capital to the effort. You want their advocacy and active support instead of a pocket veto.
The third class of action is a momentum-building action. This could be to a prospect or someone you are trying to build a stronger relationship with. It’s a first step. In this case, you want them to commit a moderate amount of time or effort. It could be saying yes to the next meeting, agreeing to a demo, or a pilot. That small step becomes a sunk cost for them and builds momentum for you.
Noise.
You have more of these than you think. How many times have you had to repeat yourself? or had a follow-up where you’re thinking, “I’ve told them this already.” Both are sure signs of a noisy conversation.
The blah blah blah.
If that happens to you a lot, you have a problem. Successful people are not noisy. They hit the sweet spot—the intersection of frame and action, and cut the noise.
Successful salespeople frame up what they are selling as the answer to the client’s problem. They understand the agenda of their customer and frame or position their product as a solution to that.
Leaders frame the vision of the company in a way that employees can see themselves in the picture and invite action that lines up with the strategy.
Creatives, product people, and innovators re-frame problems in order to approach them differently and produce disruptive, game-changing work.
It’s time to join team signal.
We all share and use the same finite resource—time.
Here’s a shocking statistic: the intangible value of a company—brand, patents, processes, goodwill, and relationships—makes up 84% of the value of the S&P500.
That’s a staggering number. It means that for every dollar those companies have in tangible assets like cash, equipment, and products, they have three and one-third dollars in intangible assets.
All those assets are the product of decisions made by people in each company.
People who meet each other; work, collaborate, and communicate.
It’s no wonder ‘meeting’ is a lazy synonym for ‘work.’
We are caught in a paradox. To advance our work and to make decisions, we have to involve other people, both in our teams and across the organization. So: more meetings.
But there’s a nagging itch: some of those meetings don’t add value.
According to Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index, we spend more than half our time (58%) in meetings about work—chasing status, monitoring progress, and shifting priorities—instead of doing work. You know the meetings, the ones that could have been an email, or the ones where you would rather be doing something else.
The meeting—as we know it—is not terribly efficient.
What is useful is in the eye of the beholder.
My list— brainstorming meetings to come out with an idea, one-on-ones to catch up or develop relationships, short, well-run project tracking meetings—is not your list.
Whatever your list is, we can agree:
Our knee-jerk reaction to anything, especially in an era of Zoom calls and hybrid work, is to click the schedule button.
Another meeting goes on the calendar. Grrrr.
Nicole Kidd, Head of Private Debt APAC, Schroders Capital, puts this phenomenon in typically Australian fashion, “it grinds my gears when people put meetings in when I am clearly busy.”
What do you do?
Actively manage your calendar. Don’t let your calendar control you; instead, you control your calendar. Put in a hard reset.
This is the advice of Brian Elliott, author of How the Future Works and an executive leader at the Future Forum and Slack; he advocates “calendar bankruptcy.” Where you “remove all recurring meetings and one-on-ones from your calendar...it’s a way to determine what’s really important.”
Once you have declared bankruptcy, it’s time to carefully put meetings back on the calendar.
Here are a collection of simple rules which help guard your time, and guide your calendar.
Jim O’Brey is a sales veteran.
As a leader of a team charged with building revenue at Viavi Solutions, he knows time is a precious resource. “I guard my time like a hawk and stop giving it away to things that don’t matter.” His simple rule is to “only engage in activities that support both my short and long-term goals.”
Do your meetings drive the work to an outcome?
“No purpose, no presence” is the rule for Stephanie Dismore, a senior vice president at HP.
If there is no clear goal, she says, “I decline the meeting. If it’s important, it’ll come back on my calendar at some point with a purpose.”
Do your meetings have a stated purpose?
How many people in your meeting matters.
Booking focused—solo—time on your calendar helps you get stuff done. A 1-on-1 works to develop relationships or quickly coordinate with a colleague. A meeting with a clear purpose and 2 to 4 people, you can get productive work done.
5 to 8 people is a sweet spot for a productive meeting, if it’s well managed, to coordinate work. Beyond eight people, the productivity curve goes downhill quickly.
“Keep the numbers down.” This is the rule for Nicolai Grebencio, a technical leader at Oracle. He advocates, “only invite people who absolutely need to be there.”
Are you keeping the numbers down?
Not every meeting has an agenda, but they’re helpful tools.
The agenda can be simple, even if it’s only two parts: get on the same page, and make a decision. It orients everyone to what you will do in a meeting.
This is a rule for Daniel Portillo, Co-Founder at The General Partnership, a venture capitalist in the fast-paced startup world.. Portillo’s rule is clear. “No agenda, no meeting. No exceptions.” For Portillo, “planning an agenda is an extremely useful barrier [to scheduling a meeting]. It forces people to think about how the time is going to be used, and if there is another way of completing the objective without having to meet.”
Do your meetings have an agenda?
What if a meeting has no agenda at all?
Reserve that for a very particular type of meeting. This is what David Frost, head of executive coaching at fassforward calls a “no-agenda check-in.” It’s a short call with a team member or colleague, which actually does have an unstated agenda—to deepen relationships.
“Think about the casual conversations in the coffee room or while walking to a meeting with a colleague. We miss those.”
“That’s what the ‘no-agenda’ check-in is. It’s intentionally replacing those moments. It only needs to be fifteen minutes. And rather than a Zoom meeting (we have enough of those), consider a phone call. This way you can walk and talk. So it has the benefit of deepening an existing relationship, with the healthy side benefit of getting your body moving.”
Are you walking and talking?
When you have a meeting, not everyone needs to be there.
Be kind. Some people are required; you want them to participate actively. Some people are optional—it’s more of an FYI for them. As a way of keeping the numbers down, mark who is required and who is optional.
Patrick Reynolds, Chief Marketing Officer for Customer Data Platform Blueconic, thinks carefully about how he divides and manages his attention.
“I want to know, am I a participant or an attendee? If I am marked as optional in the meeting, I will attend but multitask.” As a participant, Reynolds will give the meeting his full attention.
Are you marking people as required or optional?
In large corporations, there’s a tendency for the group size in meetings to be larger. This can be an advantage if you let it.
Justin Stiehr, Head of Marketing Strategy and Operations at Verizon Business, takes advantage of large meetings.
“I often look to see if multiple members of my team or if peers of mine are included. If they are, we probably have it covered—I don’t need to go.”
Are you working as a team?
With all the talk of calendar overload and Zoom fatigue, we blame technology. Productive people are taking advantage of technology.
Nancy Yaklich, a global digital innovation and transformation lead at Cargill, has changed the meeting defaults in her calendar. This has “slashed the 30-minute meeting to 20 minutes; the 60-minute meeting to 45.”
Others are experimenting with the meeting notes and recording facilities that come with most video conferencing software. “I can take time back and give time back to others, by recording me speaking over a PowerPoint deck and then sending it to others, using Loom or Berrycast,” says Luddy Liggon, a strategic HR partner at Allstate.
Are you using technology to let you smartly manage your time?
This is my favorite rule, which has in a meme dating back to 2015.
“In a world where you can be anything, be the person who ends the meeting early.”
Done. Here’s your time back.
Office occupancy is down.
According to data from Kastle systems, which monitors keycard swipes in office buildings, occupancy rates hover at less than 50% of pre-pandemic norms.
Plenty lament the office and miss the days of yore.
Columnist Peggy Noonan, in a recent Wall Street Journal piece, doesn’t want to see office life end. “The decline in office life is going to have an impact on the general atmosphere of the country. There is something demoralizing about all the empty offices, something post-greatness about them.”
Noonan isn’t alone. Malcolm Gladwell fans were outraged by the mop-headed author’s opinion that “it’s not in your best interest to work from home.”
CEOs from J.P.Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Tesla, Starbucks, Morgan-Stanley, Workday, and Visa have all gone on record advocating for a return-to-office.
Who knew it would be CEOs advocating against change?
Not Francis Saele. The workplace futurist continues “to be amazed by how many leaders in corporate management still believe that a return to the office—and the past—would be a good thing. Habits are hard to break, and for many, the concept of an office full of people is an addiction.”
Seven tropes are trotted out, like show ponies, arguing for a return to the past.
“My mind goes first to the young. People starting out need offices to learn a profession, to make friends, meet colleagues, find romantic partners and mates.” Peggy Noonan’s argument summarizes the in-office apprenticeship that worked for Boomers and Gens X and Y.
The argument, therefore, should apply to Gen Z.
Not so fast.
Let’s set aside, for the moment, the assumption that all generational cohorts are the same. Whatever your age, you’re old enough to know other people your age who have a different outlook on life. Think about that, and then recognize any statement that starts with the word generation is gibberish with a splash of mumbo-jumbo.
Case in point—one recent headline from Business Insider: “Gen Z actually hates working from home.” Another, also from Business Insider, two months earlier, “Return-to-office is driving Gen Z to quit.”
Head spinning.
Is it easier to build social relationships while physically together? Probably. Is mentoring and teaching more straightforward? It’s certainly more well-proven. Does that mean everyone wants to do it that way? No.
Katherine Hu, a Washington DC-based writer, an assistant at The Atlantic, and proud Gen Z’er, wrote that "offices will never be the social hubs they once were." She’s OK with that. As she sees it, “the pandemic has shifted long-term thinking about the necessity of weaving together one’s work and social lives.”
This is the myth of the water cooler.
Chance meetings over a plastic container release a creative spark. That spark delivers an idea. The idea is poked at, prodded, and wrestled to the ground. A fluid mix of 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration is added. Et voila, innovation.
Except: hogwash.
There is no evidence that water coolers promote innovation. It’s a myth from an analog age. When memos were mimeographed and carbon-copied. Proximity mattered because that’s what determined the flow of knowledge.
The bearer of the water-cooler myth: Managing the Flow of Technology, a book by Thomas Allen.
In 1977, Allen found that people are four times more likely to chat with someone six feet away than with someone 60 feet away. Amazingly, before email, cell phones, asynchronous documents, Slack, and any other kind of technology, colleagues on separate office floors almost never communicated with each other.
Like the “for the young people” argument, there are two sides to the innovation one. For every study saying proximity doesn’t matter, there’s another saying it does. This one, published in Nature, found that video calls reduce collaboration and the generation of novel ideas.
But; maybe-not.
Successful companies have innovated and built value—remotely—for years. Wikipedia killed an industry category without an office building or a company. Automattic, the company behind thirty percent of the world’s websites, has 1,100 employees spread across 77 cities. Gitlab, a DevOps platform used by IBM, Sony, Goldman Sachs, and NASA—to innovate—has no problems innovating remotely. Gitlab wrote the manifesto on remote work.
According to McKinsey research, “over the past two years, countries around the world have set records for new business formation, new patents issued, venture capital invested, and more.”
This may be the lamest argument.
Buildings signal a culture, they are not the culture. Go to J.P. Morgan’s New York headquarters, and the building projects power and wealth. The ground floor entryway is a vast open, unused space clad in glass and marble.
This is culture as a symbol.
But the motifs on the wall are rarely signals of the culture of a company. More often than not, like an Instagram filter, they’re what the company aspires to be, not its reality.
Culture needs a campfire, not a building.
Culture needs people sharing and swapping stories. Every gathering, every group, and every community has its unwritten rules and its norms. Each has its own culture. That culture is shaped by leaders who establish and promote those norms. Those norms signal “how we do things around here.”
If you need a building, you’re doing it wrong.
Future Forum’s research shows that culture gets better with remote work. According to Brian Elliot, leader of the Future Forum and SVP at Slack, “culture is about how we work, not where we work: "Sense of belonging" is lowest for people working full-time in the office. Full-time office workers score lower on every dimension of our Pulse from access to resources to productivity.”
To shape culture, focus on the rituals and norms.
Manchester United is one of the biggest football teams in the world. It has an army of fans. Most of them have never met each other. Most of them have never been to Old Trafford. But they all know what it is to be a Man U fan. Those fans know the stories and the folklore. They have the uniform.
Your colleagues on the factory floor are in.
The chemists working on the lab benches go to the office. This is the heavy machinery argument, laced with whataboutism. If you operate heavy machinery for a living, you have to be where the heavy machinery is. That is, until technology advances to the point that you can tele-operate the heavy machinery.
It’s the argument Elon Musk relied on in his infamous memo.
To Tesla employees: “Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers.”
This is a tough argument to receive, loaded with guilt-tripping and emotional blackmail. But if your job is to write code, you won’t be doing that on a factory floor.
Moments that matter are akin to “moments of truth” in a customer journey. The pivotal points in a customer’s relationship with a brand that either sweeten or sour it. In HR, according to Gartner, moments that matter are “the moments that impact an employee’s organizational experience most significantly throughout their day, year and career.”
Labeling a live experience a “moment that matters” sends a signal.
That signal is that the other moments don’t matter. Or don’t matter as much. When corporate communications overflow your inbox with “moments that matter”—all based in or around an office—that signaling gets a little passive-aggressive.
What about the moment when you worked, at your computer, alone, on a really hard problem for your company? Does that moment matter? Or when you re-configured the marketing campaign with your team, asynchronously, over a period of weeks. Did those moments matter?
These little well-intentioned signals can become another straw on a camel’s back.
This is an argument that’s quickly turning into a cliché.
Visa CEO Al Kelly admits that “a job can be done at home. But I’m not certain a career is built.” He goes on to reflect on his storied career and argues that he wouldn’t be CEO today if he wasn’t in the office.
It’s a benevolent variation of the “what about the young people” argument, told from a bully pulpit of power, reflecting on a career that started in the last century.
It’s moonshine, sprinkled with fairy dust, and laced with drivel.
The argument says that we, as an organization, have managers and a culture that cannot lead in a new, distributed world. What’s more, along with all the other systemic ‘isms’ we allow in our culture, we will add a new one: systemic out-of-sight-out-of-mind-ism. There is a fancy name for it. Availability bias: the phenomenon where people believe things to be true because they are easier to recall.
To be sure, some companies will operate this way.
A “Zoom ceiling” will reinforce a “glass ceiling.” For companies that operate a remote-first approach to hybrid work—Allstate, Yelp, Spotify, Splunk, TaskRabbit, Commvault—there will not be a Zoom ceiling.
Smarter companies will measure the effect of remote work on promotion rates, just as they do with their DEI efforts.
It’s not all on the company, though. There’s an onus on the employee to signal in remote work, one that ultimately will benefit them.
I have no doubt that in some companies, this argument will be true.
It’s the underlying threat in Peggy Noonan’s opinion piece. “The balance of power will change if the slowing economy leads to layoffs and hiring freezes.”
Let’s stipulate that any market is cyclical—it has ups and downs. The job market is no exception. WFH might actually be helping inflation. At the moment, the US labor market is on a hot streak. It hasn’t slowed down.
Yet.
It will at some point. Then companies will cut. Some have already started with layoffs and hiring freezes. If HR and Finance handle that as a spreadsheet exercise, it makes a mockery of every statement ever made by that organization about “values,” “purpose,” and “principles.”
Doing that undoes all the hard work to compete for talent in an up cycle of the market. Compound that with the fact that social media and sites like Glassdoor and Reddit make hiring practices and the culture of organizations much more transparent.
Employees are voting with their feet. It’s time to take off the rose-tinted glasses. It’s time to see the new world of work for the innovative place it is. Even if that place is remote.
See the post that first assembled these arguments here.
“I need to sit at the strategy table.”
That was Em, then an SVP at one of the biggest companies in the world. Em went on to be the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, then its Chief Operating Officer. She now sits on and chairs multiple boards.
That line has always stuck with me.
The first part. “I need to sit...” is mindful. To be self-aware is a true leadership trait. Leaders know what their strengths are and actively work on their gaps. Very few are open about it.
The second part, “...at the strategy table,” pops up over and over again.
Either, “how do I get more strategic?” or, “so and so isn’t strategic enough.”
I was asked the strategy question at an interview (a long time ago). “Are you more strategic, or are you better at executing?” My answer at the time:
“Uhhmm”
Now, I have a better answer. Not the whole strategy thing—that’s a book, but the shorter conundrum: how do you build your strategic muscle?
The answer lies in three stories.
Abraham Wald was a Jewish mathematician who escaped Nazi persecution. During the second world war, he worked at a hush-hush American think tank, the Statistical Research Group.
The Allies had a problem.
A massive daytime bombing campaign; a necessary part of the war effort that was chewing up the lives of young American bomber crews.
“Where do we put the armor on our bombers?” is a tricky question.
Adding armor would mean higher crew survival rates. But more armor means heavier bombers, sacrificing speed, ordnance, and fuel load.
The problem could not be solved with more: it needed ‘just enough’ armor.
The military gave Wald access to recently returned planes—covered in flak and cannon-fire holes—to solve the problem. They also came with what they thought was the answer: to put the armor where the holes, and the crew, were. They wanted Wald to work out the details. He did.
Wald told them to put the armor where there were no holes—the engines.
What Wald worked out in armoring the engines was to increase the survivability of the aircraft—they could get home—and therefore increase the chances for the crew.
He broke through a flaw we all have in our thinking.
Survival bias is a logical error where we ignore or discount failures. We see success—in this case, planes that survived—and base our thinking on that.
Wald’s insight connects to another.
This story involves Legos, not B-17s.
Leidy Klotz is a father. He is also an engineer, neuroscientist, and author of Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less. One day, playing Lego with his son Ezra, he spotted the “subtraction” phenomenon.
Leidy and Ezra were building a bridge.
Leidy had built one tower and Ezra the other. Adding the span between the two towers, they found a problem. Leidy’s tower was taller than Ezra’s. The Lego bridge would wobble. Leidy reached for more Lego blocks to fix it. But before Leidy could add more blocks to one tower, Ezra subtracted blocks from the other.
Leidy, he suspected, did what people usually do. Ezra did not.
When faced with a problem, most people add. Leidy did. It’s our natural instinct. One is good, so two must be better. This is creeping complexity. You see it everywhere. One razor-blade, Two, Three. Now four. That same creeping complexity is the enemy of product managers, Ux designers, and customer experiences everywhere.
Klotz uncovered an “addition bias.”
Addition is easier for the brain. Subtracting is hard. Another cognitive bias.
This is why, as Mark Twain infamously (did not) state, he needed more time to write a shorter letter.
Addition bias is why the tax code gets bigger; to-do lists get longer; why you have more KPIs than you need; and why you can never prune a priority list.
Which is good if you run the lottery.
Our inability to look at current events and extrapolate them to a future state is why the world missed a pandemic, we still don’t have flying cars, and inventions like Google Glass and the Segway were a bust.
But we still try. Metaverse anyone?
Jeff Bezos gets asked, a lot, “what's going to change in the next ten years?”
His reply:
“That is a very interesting question; it's a very common one.
I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next ten years?'
And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two—because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.”
Bezos’s is a strategic answer. It’s about placing bets and reducing risk.
This is something humans are not good at. To zag instead of zig.
When our minds leap, we miss the details in negative space. To look, as Wald did, at what is not there. To subtract, as Leidy’s son did, instead of add. To think, as Bezos did, about what will not change.
This is more strategic.
Instead of asking the question, “what should I do?” Ask yourself, “what should I not do?” Next time you panic about “what you have to get done,” celebrate “what you have done.”
Remember Wald and the bombers. Instead of looking for “what’s there?” think about “what’s not there.” More often than not, the answer lies not in “what you know” but in “what you don’t know.”
Leidy discovered that we have an urge to add. Instead of “what features do we add” to our product, or service, or offering, we might ask, “what can we take away?”
Take a page out of Bezos’s book. Instead of thinking about “what has changed,” think about “what hasn’t changed.” Instead of thinking about “what differentiates our product?” Think about “what is easily replicable/ replaceable about our product.” Instead of asking, “what will the future look like?” Ask yourself, “what will not change in the future?”
That’s how you sit at the strategy table.
Regrettable attrition—a lovely phrase that covers many sins.
Using regrettable attrition as a catch-all for people who leave the job is like calling a problem an opportunity. The name switch doesn’t make the problem go away, it just makes the problem sound a little less, well, problematic.
So it goes with regrettable attrition. It’s happening more and more. Work has reset. Two-thirds of the workforce—you and me—are rethinking what work means for us. The great resignation is a multi-year trend. Even if that multi-year trend slows down, regrettable attrition will still put a dent in your plans.
People are leaving in droves.
McKinsey puts the number of people ‘at risk’ of regrettable attrition at 40%. Microsoft puts the number at 41%. Bonnie Dowling, Associate Partner at Mckinsey, points out, “this isn’t just a passing trend or a pandemic-related change to the labor market. There’s been a fundamental shift in workers’ mentality, and their willingness to prioritize other things in their life beyond whatever job they hold.”
Steve Cadigan, LinkedIn’s first Chief HR Officer and author of Workquake, says, “we have never seen as many people pivot to new industries as we are seeing today, and there is no end in sight - it's the new ‘never’ normal.”
Before a person makes that pivot, there’s a decision.
Your next car purchase; triggered by the end of a lease or an accident. Putting extra dessert in your shopping cart; triggered by a pang of hunger.
The decision to quit a job has a trigger. Something puts you in search mode, ready to begin the labor of switching from one job to another.
It’s the proverbial straw on a tetchy camel’s back.
“You get to a point where the littlest things irritate you, and you know it’s time to start looking for your next move,” says Michelle Hancic, Head of People Science, APAC, at LinkedIn.
Data tells us that toxic work cultures drive the great resignation.¹
Look at the list of reasons that people leave, from a lack of career development to a lack of meaningful work, or support—all have a single root: Leadership. That leadership gap festers into a toxic culture.
A toxic culture promotes poor leaders.
Leaders shape the culture around them. Every choice a leader makes, from big policy decisions to little personal interactions, and every sentence a leader utters; makes the work, and workplace, either more rewarding or less satisfying.
Leadership is the next challenge.
Not re-christening the great resignation, but de-toxifying corporate culture, rethinking the work of distributed teams and equipping leaders to lead.
Each employee “subscribes” to an employer.
It’s an economic relationship. In exchange for a paycheck and other intangibles, employees show up and trade their time and effort. They subscribe until they are triggered to move.
This is similar to your relationship with Netflix.
In your love-hate (or love-love, or hate-hate) relationship with Netflix, you pay them. In return, you can stream a huge catalog of shows for your entertainment.
In the streamer-subscriber transaction, Netflix’s trouble is at the margins.
Netflix likes viewers that regularly binge-watch shows. They stick. They are happy. They wouldn’t even consider leaving. They are Loyalists. Defectors got upset with Netflix, left, and won’t look back. Then you have the Switchers. These are people who like streaming, and will binge-watch TV, but will switch. One month they are working through Westworld on HBO Max; next, they are onto Severance on Apple TV+, then they are back to Netflix. All these people make conscious choices.
It’s the Hostages we have to worry about.
The Hostages feel as if they have no free will. They would defect, but they don’t know how. Perhaps they have forgotten they subscribe. Or they don’t know how to unsubscribe. Or the hassle and effort—the switching cost—is too high.
You have the same mix in your employee base.
Defectors are Alumni. They’re a group that you can ignore, or tap into. And some companies—P&G, HSBC, and Citi— do it very well.
Switchers are the people that move every 18 months to three years. It doesn’t matter what you do, they will hop. Recruiters and HR should help screen them out in the selection process.
Paul Hudson, the CEO of Sanofi, sees this attitude in younger top-tier talent; they are saying, “I’ll bring from day one my experiences, and I’ll help you be a better company. But I will leave at some point, and you should not be concerned by that. I will leave it better than I found it, but I will also leave better than I arrived.”
It’s the Loyalists and Hostages you have to worry about—because you don’t know which is which. The hostage is the person you thought would never leave but did.
The switching costs for their next job are the same switching costs you would incur in your next car purchase. They fall into three buckets — “procedural” costs, “financial” costs, and “relationship” costs.
In the “procedural” bucket, economic risks, search costs, learning, and set-up costs, all chew up time.
Economic risk is the uncertainty of switching.
Effort is put in to get a new job, only to find halfway through the process that the compensation isn’t as good.
Search costs are the time and effort it takes me to look for a new job.
Learning and set-up costs are the mental effort, and time it takes to switch to that new job; new colleagues, new passwords, new software, and a new culture.
The “financial” switching costs are as real.
Loss of benefits, like switching from one healthcare or retirement plan to another. Perks that were associated with one job that are not present in another.
Monetary loss costs are the one-time financial outlay in switching—that may be paying for a job coach, someone to help with a resume or a new suit for an interview.
Finally, the “relationship” switching costs are emotional.
Personal relationship loss — they liked their colleagues at work—some were even considered friends, and will be missed.
There may even be Brand relationship loss. Put yourself in their shoes. Your mom has heard of Mastercard, Google, Verizon, or Citi. She can and does brag about you. She’s never heard of where you work now.
The barrier is there, in the corner of your eye, and it takes mental effort to look squarely at it, never mind climb it, yet, as the great resignation proves, more and more people are. Pay transparency laws will lower the economic risks of switching. Glassdoor, Comparably, and Fishbowl give prospective candidates clues into the culture and leadership of companies they are exploring.
There is more work to do for leaders.
Not in making the switching costs higher—that’s HR’s job, by making the benefits better, or the employer brand better. A leader's job is to stop the trigger.
To shape a culture where work has purpose and people are valued.
To build people up, not break them down.
To teach, and to learn.
A senior executive once told me, with pride, “we run a complex business.”
I smiled to be polite. On the inside, I winced. An angel wept.
The business in question was and is one of the biggest brands in the world, with millions of customers and a global footprint. The pride wasn’t in making a complex business simple for all stakeholders; the pride was in being able to operate and execute in that business despite its complexity.
Most people know complex and complicated are different. Those people also know alligators and crocodiles are different. Press them further, though, and they find the two difficult to separate. They’re big, ferocious things that can chew you up, and you’d best stay away from them. I’m talking about the alligators and the crocodiles, obviously, not complexity and complicated.
What that executive really meant was “we run a complicated business.” Meaning it has many moving parts and components; with no attempt to reduce the high level of difficulty or effort in getting things done, for employees or customers.
If that executive ran a complex business, simplicity would be an obsession. The number of moving parts may not reduce, and the attention to detail would remain the same, but the effort in navigating work reduces dramatically. This obsession with simplicity is transformative, especially in business transformations. Bob Toohey, CHRO of Allstate, puts it like this, “all transformations are about getting better. They are also about people. That means everything needs to be simple. Life doesn’t get better when we make things harder.”
Complication is a villain. He creeps into businesses as they grow and works himself into the seams: weighing down processes and sucking the energy out of people.
Over time, the unwitting call him Complexity. He grows, powered by the law of entropy, and becomes part of your culture. Complexity teams with other monsters: Jargon, Runaround, and Status Quo.
Leaders recognize Complexity and know his true name. They have a superpower of their own to fight with: simplicity.
Simplicity is a leadership superpower that comes with awareness and practice.
Are you aware?
Look at the last email you sent.
Ask yourself: would an eight-year-old understand it? Would your significant other? They’re not, I assume, unintelligent people.
But you have probably been lulled over time by Complexity. In a trance, you’re not aware of what you’re doing: Terms of art; Acronyms; Long, run-on sentences.
You might use “weasel words” like the classic “synergy” or “empower.” Or my particular nails-on-chalkboard-er “utilize.”
Do you strive for perfection? Do you cover all the bases, just in case? Are you a what-about-er? “What happens on a rainy Tuesday, surrounded by flying pigs?” Are you prepared for that? Do you have a backup plan for the blue moon?
Complexity has snuck in.
“You know too much, and you are too passionate about it.”
Knowing a lot, and being passionate, might seem like heroic qualities to you. To others, they are a gateway for Complication.
Don’t make them think.
When Complication gets into your process, he’s invisible. Or, if you see him, you nod proudly at Complexity.
Your process is like this remote control.
Worse, how you speak about your process, onboard people to it, or govern your process is like this “simple” user guide.
For comparison, this is a similar user guide from the instruction manual for nuclear engineers.
To be fair, the nuclear power plant instruction manual runs to a few more pages.
This is how people use your process; it’s all people want from your process, and it’s all people need from your process.
Eventually, you rework your process after work, trial, and tears. You know you’ve cracked it when the user manual becomes a diagram like this.
Complication is vanquished. Apply the same method to your product, business area, or function.
John Maeda wrote the book on simplicity. In exploring the intersection of design, technology, business and life, he outlined ten laws.
For me, the first three are a starting point. Law 1/ Reduce, is a reframe in your thinking, instead of asking, “how complex does this have to be?” ask, “how simple can I make this?”
Law 2/ Organize, is about grouping. How do I bucket this stuff in a way that makes sense? Makes it easy to consume?
Law 3/ Time, is a convenient method of measuring simplicity. Does it take longer? It’s likely more complex. Is it quicker? You have started to conquer Complexity.
But, Maeda cautions, simplicity isn’t everything. To illustrate this, he uses the example of cookies and laundry. Show a child a big cookie and a small cookie; which would they likely want? The big cookie.
Show that same child a big pile of laundry and a small pile, and ask, “which would they rather fold?” it’s the small one. This is at the heart of his laws. “You know, when you want more, it’s because you want to enjoy it. When you want less, it’s because it’s about work.”
Here’s a hard truth. People don’t want more of your process, your product (unless it’s cookies), your business area, your function.
Don’t worry; you don’t need to look for a radioactive spider. You do though, need to practice.
Maeda’s colleague at Everbridge, David Starmer is the Chief Transformation Officer. He advocates, “Instead of trying to ‘add in’ simplicity, you need to actively ‘take out’ complexity.”
Good advice. I recommend you start taking out complexity here.
The rule of three gives you a target for Maeda’s Law 1, and builds off Law 2. Give people three choices. For yourself, don’t try and manage more than three active projects at a time. Group things into threes.
It’s all to do with working memory. While some people can manage prodigious feats of memory, most of us start to peter out after three. It’s why a phone number is grouped into three parts. It’s why tip buttons on point-of-sale readers have three options. It’s why small working teams can generally outperform larger teams.
In a sentence, design thinking is this: Build from the consumer’s point of view, not yours.
This is something we practice with a tool called a T-leaf. It’s a way to speak to your audience's listening and make sure you have their attention. Naturally, it has three parts, asking how does your audience feel? What do they want to know? And what might they do?
This piece of advice is either obvious or genius. More distributed work means more emphasis on grabbing attention and telling a story. The art of communication and persuasion.
Writing well allows you to clearly communicate ideas. Putting pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboard, takes an idea from fuzzy to clear. An old professor once told me, “you [and your idea] only get to rigor if you write it down.
Editing removes the clutter.
If you want to be a better speaker, first, be a better writer. If you want to communicate better, write better. This is not advice to write the next great American novel, but it is advice to read.
Practice simplicity in your writing. Add some zest. See what persuades you. It could be microcopy on a website. Understand that it is not a PowerPoint slide overloaded with bullets. If it doesn’t persuade you, if it doesn’t grab your attention, why would you think it will work for someone else.
You are discovering your leadership superpower.
Complication is quivering in the corner.
Hybrid work is the new casual Friday.
There’s a story that epitomizes the angst that came with casual Fridays. In the mid-90s, just as casual Fridays were taking off, so was Silicon Valley. It was the dawn of the Internet, and Wall Street wanted to get in on the action.
One promising venture, based in the valley, was looking for backing. They had interest from New York. The east coast-based investment firm wanted to bet big on tech; this was their first overture.
Everyone wanted to make a good first impression.
So the Wall Street types shed their Brooks Brothers suits and dressed in the classic ensemble of the valley: button-down blue denim shirts and khakis. The tech firm also wanted to make a good impression. This was their chance at a significant investment and their first step to an IPO: they shed their khakis.
Imagine the scene: Wall Streeters, used to fine wools in rumpled khakis; meeting engineers in high-end haberdashery.
When casual Fridays hit corporate America, legions panicked.
Some Millennials and Gen Z’ers might think this true story is a little far-fetched. Boomers and Gen X’ers will chuckle at the distant memory.
Hybrid work will go the way of casual Friday.
The same CEOs that struggled with open-toed shoes are struggling with office loss. They dish out thinly veiled warnings, dressed as advice about the career ladder. Others chatter about remote workers being first on the chopping block in the coming work-from-office revolution.
They rail, like Lord Sugar, “this is a bloody joke. The lazy gits make me sick. Call me old-fashioned, but all this work-from-home BS is a total joke. ”
Not everyone looks back at the office with nostalgia.
Alphabet’s (née Google) CEO Sundar Pichai is busy figuring out how to turn hybrid work into work. “We are testing a hypothesis that a flexible work model will lead to greater productivity, collaboration, and well-being.”
Verizon is testing what it calls “Work Forward.” CEO Hans Vestberg sees hybrid work where everyone has “the best of the virtual world, [but can]... come into the office, meet colleagues, and work with them.”
Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, asks, “If the office didn’t exist, would we invent it? [and] What would it be invented for?”
More enlightened organizations, led by more enlightened CEOs, see this as an opportunity. They know that figuring out hybrid work is the next battlefield in the war for talent.
That takes investment in six areas: leadership, technology, learning, onboarding, space, and culture.
What hasn’t changed? Leaders still have to lead people and manage work.
But work and people are now distributed. Work isn’t happening in a building; it’s happening across a network. Leaders don’t sit in corner offices; they are a cornerstone of their teams.
Without the bounds of an office, leaders must engage people, find ways to keep them productive, and align them against business goals.
There is some bad news in this.
“I was surprised how many high-potential leaders couldn’t figure this out.” That was from a conversation with a Chief People Officer at the height of the pandemic. The shell shock of a sudden switch to remote work left some leaders floundering. “But I was also surprised at how many people — ones I did not expect, stepped up — which means we got our leadership model wrong.”
That same transition is happening as we move to hybrid work.
Leading distributed teams is hard, which explains why over 80% of Chief Learning Officers view leadership as the most critical subject of 2022, outpacing hot topics like diversity, digital transformation, and change management.¹
Without skilled leadership, hybrid work won’t work.
We’re still saying, “you’re on mute” too much.
This exemplifies three problems. First, the tech is still not foolproof. Second, it’s evolving rapidly. According to economist Nick Bloom, “the flow of new patents supporting work from home doubled within the first 18 months of the pandemic.” A portent of things to come. Third, we all have to get with the program — we are all our own tech support.
Technology won’t solve hybrid work, but it will make it better.
A tech stack built for distributed work falls into a gap where the Chief Information Officer, HR’s head of Employee Experience, and the Chief Learning Officer have to come together. Their new mission is to create a working environment that securely enables distributed, asynchronous work, minimizes any learning curve, and maximizes productivity.
We will know the technology works once we don’t know it’s there.
When the work changes, we have to be ready.
Digital Transformation. AI. Machine Learning. All code for the inevitable automation of work. During our lifetimes, our routine work will go away. Instead, we will learn new skills, prime among them: the ability to learn.
Learning is the best driver of great workplace culture.
Joe Dusing, Paylocity’s L&D head, understands why learning must be part of hybrid work: “It’s the difference between an employee staying or leaving your company. In today’s labor market, people want to know that development programs exist in an organization and if they don’t, that’s a red flag for them. New employees expect paths forward to both grow skills and further their careers.”²
Don’t wait for learning to come to you.
Leaders have to foster a culture of curiosity. Rewards come with fostering growth. It’s time to work with your HR and L&D partners to explore how to bring continuous learning opportunities to your team.
Create a learning environment where people can learn and grow.
There is no door to walk through on the first day.
We live in a strange world where a new hire will have no idea how tall their colleagues are for months. That adds to the usual onboarding headaches: getting an email address, passwords, access to the network, and finding a place to sit. Then, figuring out who’s who in the organization and where you can get a good lunch. For most of those — except lunch — there’s an answer.
After recruiting, there’s a logistical and human side to onboarding.
Chris Herd and Trey Bastian are the founders of Firstbase, a venture backed by Andreesen Horowitz. They tackle the logistical aspect of worker provisioning, providing a software service that helps companies track and manage the hardware that remote workers use. And it’s a hardware service that can pre-install software on hardware, ship it to employees, and provide remote IT support.
The first step of onboarding is complete: you have a laptop and a chair, and you’re comfortably plugged in. You even have some excellent company swag.
Now, the human side.
As all recruiters know, this is the handoff gap. It’s the gray area of onboarding that plagues or perfumes the process. Leaders step up, welcome new employees, and show them the ropes.
Beth Veen, COO at Visible, sees onboarding as part of recruiting: “It begins the moment your business engages with a potential new team member. Those first impressions set the tone for who you are and what you stand for as an employer.”
“Pre-boarding is often overlooked and undervalued. Those days leading up to a new gig are full of promise and excitement, and your new company — not just your new boss — should be taking steps to fold you into the workplace culture and show you you're valued before day one.”
Once you’re in the door, it’s time to learn the ropes.
This is a return to what Rob Garlick, Managing Director, Citi Global Insights, calls “Apprenticeship.” It’s one of the most demanding challenges of working in a distributed workforce. “The biggest challenge from hybrid [work] is apprenticeship, particularly for new employees. It’s something we need to lean into, not out.”
The great resignation means you have more new employees onboarding to your company than ever before. But unfortunately, when most organizations dig into their attrition numbers, their turnover rates are highest in low tenure employees.
Invest in onboarding to get it right.
Office occupancy is converging on about 60% of pre-pandemic levels.³
Smart CFOs everywhere have harvested cost savings back to the business by reducing travel and real estate expenses. The clawback can be re-invested in other areas.
Dave Cairns, Senior Vice President, Office Leasing at CBRE Canada, believes that Real Estate (the function) needs to rethink Real Estate.
He notes that “Flex office is on fire right now. The best square foot is the one a company DOES NOT lease!” This is what Cairns calls an “office in your pocket” — flexible leasing might be the way to go.
Savvy businesspeople are rethinking the office's role.
Paul Stanton, Head of Strategy for Equiem, advocates the building of clubhouses (I don’t love that word, but I love the idea).
According to Paul, “Clubhouses will be private employee amenities — private cafes to meet with coworkers; private libraries and quiet spaces to knock out presentations; private tapas bars to entertain clients — in buildings that provide companies the services and infrastructure to create them. Executives won’t have to think very hard about their attendance policy because employees will want to come.”
Some CEOs are embracing this move.
The days of office renovations from cubicles and carpets to open space and concrete are over. Hybrid work will require more than installing sleep pods and foosball tables.
The future office will be where teams want to get together when they need to get together.
Old-school CEOs find it difficult to disconnect “culture” from “office.”
The office is central, they claim, to culture. CEO Cathy Merrill wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post saying as much. Employees pushed back and walked off the job. Al Kelly, CEO of Visa, has gone on record saying, “face time is an essential prerequisite for fostering a strong company culture, advancing diversity efforts, and helping talent develop.”⁴
Not so fast.
“The data runs counter to the idea that always being in the office is the best way to foster culture,” says Brian Elliott, SVP at Slack and author of How the Future Works. “One way to think about culture is "sense of belonging" — do people feel like they are part of a team? Our research shows that on issues like "sense of belonging," people working full time in the office have the lowest average scores. Giving people the flexibility to come together on the rhythms that work for their team is a far better way to create a sense of belonging than top-down mandates.”
Culture informs how we work. Leaders shape culture: a culture that can embrace psychological safety, learning and curiosity, agility, and digital transformation.
Intentional rituals can help reinforce “how we do things around here.”
Rituals are like a drill an athlete uses to create muscle memory. Over time, these rituals create the collective habits and unwritten rules that underpin a culture. And, those rituals don’t need a place.
Those rituals start at the team level.
They might be rituals that carry over, like daily stand-ups or win-loss interviews. They might be new — and needed — like the ritual of ending meetings early. They might be adapted for a hybrid world, like the ritual signaling of saying “good morning” via Slack channel rather than when you walk into the office.
Be careful what you build rituals around.
Everything signals, and it can unintentionally backfire on you. For example, trying to build a hybrid culture and overly celebrating the “office” part of the work, sending a signal that “you’re only working if you're in the office.”
Soon, just as Friday is just Friday, “hybrid work” will be work.
To meet or not to meet, that is the question.
A less Shakespearean way of putting it: “I can’t believe I ****ing sat in traffic for this.” We have flipped the switch to remote work and flip it back and forth, muttering “hybrid.” With both moves, meetings are on the rise.
A quick scan of the internet reveals a litany of complaints.
I have: “too many meetings”; “meetings that could have been emails”; “more meetings about work instead of doing work.” All that gives me “zoom fatigue.”
We “spend time commuting to the office for a meeting and find half the team is on zoom.” And there’s a “lack of creativity and engagement in meetings.”
Each complaint contains a grain of truth.
But, as usual, it’s more about the “how” than the “what.” Whether you’re a “remote-first,” “hybrid,” or “stuck in the past, office-first” organization, fixing meetings — or even just improving them slightly — can make our work a little better.
Perhaps a flock, a muddle, or a murder (of meetings)?
Your move Merriam-Webster, because meetings aren’t solitary creatures. They flock and muddle together. There are too many, and it’s time to start weeding a few out.
Take a little more time, improve your writing skills, and put it in an email. If you can say it better than you can write it, use Loom or a Loom alternative.
Now let’s begin to prune the others.
Grabbed from the headlines: “80% of US workers experiencing ‘Zoom fatigue:’ survey.” Case in point, Pew Research, which found that “Among employed adults with a job that can be done from home and use video calling or online conferencing often, 26% are ‘worn out’ by the amount of time spent on video calls.”
Not so fast with the Zoom-shaming.
Not seen in headlines? “Employee comes home from work; reports being ‘really tired.’”
Zoom fatigue is real, but it’s not the same as meeting fatigue.
The chatter about Zoom fatigue misses something. It doesn’t separate the underlying problem — too many meetings; and too many back-to-back meetings.
A meeting isn't a parade. If you're measuring your status by how many show up to your meetings, you have deeper problems.
Be kind to your attendees.
First, what is the meeting for? Are we there to make a decision? To brainstorm or create? Is it for tracking and status? To inform? Just answering the question is a start. It helps you understand if there should be a meeting. You realize who needs to be there. And there’s an added advantage.
You can then let people know why you’re having the meeting.
Invite required attendees as well as optional attendees. Plan the meeting time around the required attendees. If you’re optional, don’t be offended, be honored. This is a meeting planned by someone that respects your time.
Most meetings are to coordinate work, not to do work. Bizarre.
According to Asana, we spend 58% of our day coordinating work, not doing it. Pick out the standing meetings on your calendar, and mark them in red. These are meetings that can give you precious time back.
Decide who needs to be there. Make sure the meeting has a tight focus. Does it need to be weekly, or can you meet every two weeks? Tighten up the agenda. Put anything that doesn’t warrant discussion in an email or dashboard.
David Shim, Co-Founder, and CEO of Read AI, assesses the state of virtual meetings. “1 in 5 suck.” Meaning those meetings aren’t engaging, useful, or informative
How do you remove the suck?
Make your meetings shorter. According to Read data, meetings get worse when they are over 50 minutes, with rapidly dropping engagement scores.
Standing meetings need a standard end to the agenda.
At fassforward, we have two lines, "🤔 anything else?" (The emoji is included). And "⏱️ In a world where you can be anything, be the person that ends the meeting early." (And yes, that's in bold at the bottom of the agenda).
Should we not do more work and less coordination?
Book a meeting with yourself. This is focus time for you to get work done. If you think better with others, and collaborate, add one, maybe two people to the meeting. Four, in this case, is a crowd.
Decrease the number of meetings to organize the work.
Use meetings to increase social connection. I am not advocating for more Zoom “happy hours.” Thankfully, that fad has been and gone, like Troll Dolls and Tamagotchis. But, if you are leading a meeting, be aware of the value of small talk — the idle, non-work-related banter that establishes social connection and builds trust in the team.
In a peer-reviewed study, Stanford researchers examined actual Zoom fatigue. They found four underlying causes: excessive close-up eye contact, mirror fatigue, long periods of immobility, and the strain of trying to interpret nonverbal cues.
For each cause, there is a cure.
Excessive close-up eye contact; imagine standing in a crowded elevator, your eyes gazing down. Looking directly at someone you don’t know that well is too intense. We wouldn't get that close. With Zoom, it can feel like we are staring a little too intensely into someone’s eyes.
The cure: change Zoom's settings and window size so that others' faces seem sufficiently 'far enough’ away to you.
Some of us could stare in a mirror all day. Some of us, not so much. If you don’t like how your face looks, you’re more prone to ‘mirror fatigue.’ Staring at your face all day long on Zoom is psychologically exhausting.
There is a cure: Once you are happy that your camera is working and others can see you, use the "hide self-view" button to avoid looking in the mirror.
Immobility — not: "I have no bandwidth, my video is frozen," but "I am sat, immobile, frozen in place for hours."
The cure for this one is easy. Repeat after me, people. “Schedule shorter meetings!” and “move around between meetings!” If your oppressive schedulers won't do that, feel free to switch the video off for five minutes and walk around.
The last cause of zoom fatigue comes from the strain of interpreting non-verbal cues. It’s simply easier, in person, to pick up the non-verbal “my turn” to talk signal.
If you are running the meeting, help people figure out when to speak — especially if some on your team have trouble with the non-verbal cues or are under-participating.
In a report out or check-in, the current speaker picks the next speaker when finished. This way, everyone knows they have their 'turn' and waits for the baton. In a small group meeting, the added advantage is that you have to pay attention, as you could be up next, and have to remember who has spoken.
You have discussed a topic; now you want to poll people’s opinions. Type in the chat window the names of who goes first, next, etc., in the chat window of the meeting.
See the little hand icon somewhere in your video menu? Its location varies depending on which brand of video conferencing software you use. Using it can feel awkward at first. But if you demonstrate raising the hand and working to that order, the team will catch on.
What doesn't work: Saying that we will go along the grid. The way pretty much all video conferencing software works, the grid of faces you are looking at is not the same grid anyone else sees. Meaning, that the faces are the same, but the order is different, so you can't use the order of the grid as an organizing function to show who is up next.
Shall we have a meeting about this to go through it?
Work is working.
A virus took us home, and we liked it. A global experiment in remote work on an unimagined scale. Business went virtual, and professionals stocked up on webcams. ¹
Two years later, employment rates are up; the Dow Jones and Nasdaq are up, companies are beating profit estimates. People are reporting increased productivity. ²
Zoom gloom, a great resignation (or great reset), a shifting on-again-off-again return to office date, as well as concerns about the erosion of communication, coordination, collaboration, and culture.³
One ‘crack’ might connect all of these concerns — connection.
Michael Arena, VP Talent & Development at Amazon Web Services, worries about “the neighborhood effect,” “bonding social capital” and “bridging social capital.” For Arena, "bonding social capital occurs ... within a team where each individual actively interacts with every other individual. ... Bridging social capital exists when various groups are connected to one another."⁴
Arena’s point — without a social fabric, the effectiveness of the team and the organization declines.⁵
He’s right.
Eventually, this will hit business in the pocketbook. If you don’t feel part of the team, connected to your colleagues, and enjoying your work — and the opportunity presents itself — what will you do?
Leave.
On a broad scale, productivity is up. Social connection is down.
We feel it personally — a push-pull of wanting to “hang” with colleagues and, at the same time, a desire to control our own time and destiny.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, calls it the paradox of hybrid work.
“Hybrid work represents the biggest shift to how we work in our generation.” But it’s not a one size fits all approach. “According to our research, the vast majority of employees say they want more flexible remote work options, but at the same time also say they want more in-person collaboration, post-pandemic.”
In fassforward’s work with HR leaders and senior executives, there’s an itch to “get back.”
That itch is an underlying uneasiness and an awareness that something isn’t quite clicking.
They know that high-functioning teams and organizations are aligned to clear outcomes, trust each other, and continuously learn and improve. All of that is a function of the social cohesion in and between teams.
This means that the job of a leader is increasingly difficult.
Just as the balance between work and life upended during the pandemic, the line between productivity and social connectedness has strengthened. Over and over again, we see the following issues to solve for hybrid work.
In big to small order, they are — Connecting with People, Mental Health and Wellbeing, Increasing Workload, Onboarding and Learning, Work/ Life Balance, Team Cohesion, Coordination, and Collaboration, Getting to Results, and finally, Access, Connectivity, and Tech.
All of these are connected. Solving just one will not solve hybrid work.
Solving these problems will come from observation (of how others are tackling them) and smart experiments, where you and your team try things out.
If necessity is the mother of invention, policy is not the father.
“Solving” hybrid work by defining Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday as the days you’re coming into the office — that’s a bad answer. Worse, asking the question, “Which days of the week should we set?” is a dumb question.
The smart question is, “how do we unlock the potential in hybrid work?”
The answer to that question, or at least part of the answer — is autonomy. Imagine for yourself — control of your own calendar. Your own work. Your own priorities. A working utopia. Now imagine that for each member of your team. With each member in control of their own calendar, work, and priorities. A dysfunctional dystopia.
The trick will be tying autonomy to engagement, productivity, and alignment. How do we increase autonomy, and increase engagement; increase autonomy, and increase productivity; increase autonomy, and increase alignment?
One example, which threads through Access, Connectivity and Tech, Getting to Results, Increasing Workload, Coordination and Collaboration, and Team Cohesion, is Google’s “speedy meetings.”
I run a couple of standing meetings a week and switched on this feature, which automatically turns a standard 1-hour session to 50 minutes on the calendar. I was very pleased with myself for (a) finding the feature and (b) being proactive about #hybridwork.
Then technology hit people.
A voice chirps up fifty minutes into my weekly roadmap meeting, “we’re at fifty minutes.” The devil on my shoulder was not happy. “We have more to do; I was in the middle of speaking. What are you doing?”
Thankfully, the angel is a little more reasonable.
“That’s good. We’re being respectful of everyone’s time. We have a culture where people feel free to speak up. Work will always expand to fill the allotted time, anyway.”
This is how these smart experiments with hybrid work will work.
An idea to make work better. To lift personal autonomy; to increase productivity, engagement, and alignment. Then, a hack — possibly aided by technology (in this case: speedy meetings); finally, a habit change.
That’s how we get work working.
Many leaders declare, but Volodymr Zelenskyy has been focused on action — demonstrating expansive leadership throughout the invasion of his country.
In Part 1 of this article, I reviewed our key leadership tool called Thinking Patterns℠.¹ To be successful leaders, we need to understand how we think, and importantly, how others think. There are four key elements to our Thinking Patterns, all of which Zelenskyy is demonstrating:
Ethics is about people. It’s leaders who earn your trust. They are fair and principled, and make the commitment to listen to and understand you. It's the "should be" of leadership. Think Mother Theresa.
Vision is about possibility. It's leaders who explore options and set direction. They define what's important in a reasoned, systemic way. They inspire you. It’s the ‘could be’ of leadership. Think Martin Luther King Jr.
Reality is about data. These leaders face facts and explore evidence. They define the plan and detail ‘how’ it’s going to be done. It’s the ‘is’ of leadership. Think Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Courage is about action. It’s leaders who take charge and make bold moves. They set the ‘when’, do what’s difficult, and encourage you to take risks. It’s the ‘will be’ of leadership. Think Malala Yousafzai.
As individuals, we default towards certain elements more than others. When we get "stuck," we revert to those elements. When we are at our best, we incorporate all four elements and demonstrate expansive leadership.
In Part 1, we reviewed how Zelenskyy is demonstrating ethics and vision in his leadership. Now, we will cover reality and courage.
From day one, Zelenskyy understood the reality that Ukraine could not win a war against Russia on its own.
He understood the reality that he had no military experience and would have to defer to his military leaders to lead battles. He understood the reality that as a former actor, he’s a great storyteller with a unique ability to inspire his people and to win the support of the world.
Since Russia’s attack began, Zelenskyy has implemented a deliberate and methodical plan based in reality.
His nightly addresses to his people have kept them informed on the war and reinforced that he will not leave them. He isn’t going anywhere until victory is achieved. His message to his people is a consistent one, “we will win if we all stick together and defend Ukraine.”
For the first six weeks of the war, he also averaged one address per day to the outside world.
From South Korea, to Europe, to the US, he has presented the reality of this war’s atrocities to us all. He has shown chilling video of the reality of the slaughter of innocent women, men and children. The reality of beautiful, historic cities being torn to the ground. The reality that Putin has done this before (Chechnya, Syria, Georgia, Crimea) and will continue until he is stopped.
The result has been the largest package of military aid from the US and Europe since World War II.
Just as Ukraine is under turmoil due to an outside force, so too is the office.
The reality, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, is that “hybrid work represents the biggest shift to how we work in our generation.”² Reality is all about data. As leaders grapple with the future of hybrid work, there is no shortage of data to help inform (and confuse them!) about the best way forward. However, today’s sheer volume of data can be overwhelming and contradictory. For example, the Microsoft study that Nadella was referencing showed that while “70% of employees want flexible, remote options, 65% want more in-person time with my team.” ³
There are no easy answers for hybrid work, but as Zelenskyy has made it clear that the buck stops with him, leaders need to embrace the reality that the transition to an effective hybrid world starts with them.
Leaders are the biggest drivers of culture, and toxic cultures have been the biggest driver of the Great Resignation.⁴
My colleague, Gavin McMahon, offers ideas on how to manage work without the workplace. As he explains, leaders need to acknowledge that “they have grown up leading in an office” and that “a return to office can't be a return to command and control.”
In this new reality, leaders need to embrace the paradox of hybrid work, demonstrate flexibility in their thinking, and course correct as needed.
Zelenskyy’s leadership pattern clearly starts in Courage.
His first action when the invasion started was rejecting safe passage out of Ukraine. “I need ammunition, not a ride” is a comment from a courageous leader who is taking charge. Knowing he was the primary target of the initial invasion and in defiance of his top aides, Zelenskyy remained in Kyiv, to lead from the front.
He showed courage by making those nightly addresses to his fellow countrymen. He would emerge from his bunker to film his own address on his own phone in the streets of Kyiv. And do it even while the Russians were shelling the city.
"We must defend the cities, defend the villages. Defend every meter of our land. And every part of our heart. Ukrainian heart."
Once the Russians began retreating from Kyiv, Zelenskyy ventured to the front lines to meet with the soldiers. He visited the countless injured men, women and children in hospitals. He brought the atrocities that occurred in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha and Makariv into our living rooms first hand.
Courage is demonstrated in many ways beyond just bold, decisive actions.
At the end of his emotional address to the US Congress, he spoke in English (his 3rd language behind Ukrainian and Russian) to hit home his powerful message: “my heart has stopped just like those of more than 100 children" who had been killed by that point of the war.
While Zelenskyy’s courage resulted in the largest military aid from the US and Europe since WWII, his impact on the private sector is unprecedented.
“Conscious capitalism” has been on the rise for a decade since Whole Foods co-CEO John Mackey and marketing professor Raj Sisodia coined the term in the title of their book in 2013.⁵ Conscious capitalism has also been a great example of many corporate leaders “declaring vs demonstrating.” Supporting initiatives like ESG⁶ is now a requirement for every major company (including the large oil companies). However, the bottom line profits and shareholder interests have largely remained the priority.
Until now.
Zelenskyy’s powerful message to the world has resulted in an unprecedented response from the private sector that has directly hit their bottom lines. At least 253 international companies have entirely halted operations in Russia. BP, Exxon and Shell have said they are divesting billions of dollars in Russian energy assets. US company Stanley Black & Decker recently ended its operations in Russia. According to their filings, its Russian operations had been making about $150 million in revenue a year.⁷
One of the most courageous exits from Russia came from McDonalds, 30 years after it became a symbol of Glasnost by opening its first restaurant in Moscow.
McDonald's had 847 restaurants and more than 60,000 employees in Russia at the end of 2021. As a result of shutting down all of its operations, it announced an estimated $1.2 to $1.4 billion loss. CEO Chris Kempczinski stated "We have a commitment to our global community and must remain steadfast in our values. And our commitment to our values means we can no longer keep the Arches shining there."⁸
In an amazing demonstration that conscious capitalism can work, the stock was little changed on the day this courageous announcement was made.
Leadership starts with a Conversation
In a few short months Volodomyr Zelenskyy has taught the world many valuable lessons on leadership. He has emulated the great ethical, visionary, reality-based and courageous leaders who demonstrate expansive leadership. He has followed up his words with action.
Perhaps his loudest and boldest action has been his consistent proposal to end the war, not through military strength, but through conversation. He recognizes what we believe is the key tenant of leadership: it starts with a conversation.
Or in his words: “It’s victory when the weapons fall silent, and people speak up.”
HR. Human Remains. Human Reorganization. Human Recrimination.
These are cruel descriptions for a function that has spent years rebranding itself — from Personnel to Human Resources to Talent to People Teams. Depending on where you sit, “we’re from Human Resources and we’re here to help” is good or bad news.
Oft-maligned, HR sat in the nerve center of pandemic response.
The overnight switch to remote work could not have happened without them, or IT. While IT provided the infrastructure, HR steadied the ship, and became the goto resource for connection and guidance.
No wonder CHRO’s are touted as the next generation of CEOs.
Alongside the switch to remote work, a tumult of social issues and the steady swing to hybrid work, HR leaders face a persistent challenge — the great resignation.
It must be human nature to rename things we don’t like. That might explain the switch from Personnel to People teams and the inclination of everyone, everywhere, to rechristen the Great Resignation. The “Great” part is kept, it’s the “Resignation” part that changes.
Great... Aspiration (Whitney Johnson), Attraction (Aaron de Smet), Catalyst (Otto Berkes), Exploration (Mike Clementi), Opportunity (Jennifer Rotmer), Re-engagement (Anne Chow), Reprioritization (Oren Barzilai), Rethink (Ranjay Gulati),Return (Ben Laker).
All of which makes me feel I should come up with another noun.
But I won’t.
What all the renamers have got right is that the “Great Resignation” requires a fundamental rethink of how we, and HR, approach work. (Prize to Ranjay Gulati for sticking the landing).
Richard Florida framed the period after the 2008-09 economic meltdown as the “Great Reset.”
As the world lurched from financial crisis to global pandemic, the World Economic Forum grabbed that “reset” appellation and stuck it to their 50th Annual meeting in 2020. Klaus Schwab, the founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum said, “the pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world.”
Partly that’s a reflection of the rise of stakeholder capitalism.
We hear it all around us — a growing drumbeat of purpose-driven companies and brands. Putting “purpose” at the core of your strategy, using it to engage employees, or uncover your Ikigai. The sentiment that’s beautifully summed up as, “Stuff, we love stuff. And there’s some really great stuff out there. But I doubt any of us will look back on our lives and think, ‘I wish I had bought an even thinner TV.’”¹
That moment in time, struggling with the new mores of remote work, gave us time for reflection. According to Gartner, “65% of employees say the pandemic has made them rethink the place that work should have in their lives.”² Consequently, ADP has found that “71% of workers are contemplating a major career move this year.”³
That’s relatively new data, but the trend has been there for a while.
People are voting with their feet.
Joseph Fuller and William Kerr, Harvard Business School professors who work on the Future of Work project, noted the longevity of the trend. “What we are living through is not just short-term turbulence provoked by the pandemic but rather the continuation of a long-term trend.”⁴
Let’s dig into that trend a little.
The U.S. Department of Labor and Statistics releases its “Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey” every month. It measures a few factors; key among them “Openings rate” — the percentage of job openings in the labor market; “Layoffs rate” — the percentage of workers involuntarily separated from their jobs; and “Quit rate” — how many people voluntarily resigned from their jobs.
Translate that to how you might feel about the labor market.
“Openings rate” might translate into how you fancy your chances of getting a new job. “Layoffs rate” might be the general threat of losing your job; “Quit rate” might translate into how many people you know — or how likely you are — to go and find a new job.
The lines are working on the side of the employee, not the employer.
With the exception of a pandemic blip, the economy has been strong since 2008. Opening rates — job opportunities — have climbed; layoff rates have remained low, and surprise, surprise, voluntary quit rates have climbed.
The story repeats in tech sectors of the economy.
You work for a company that is either in tech, is rechristening itself as tech, or is investing heavily in digital transformation. People are needed. There’s a recruiting gap in [blank]tech — adtech, martech, fintech, biotech, medtech, insurtech, cleantech (the list goes on) — areas of surging competition.
These are the demarcation lines in the war for talent.
Your next car purchase might be triggered by the end of a lease, an accident, or an ad. So it goes with the decision to quit a job. Something puts you in search mode, ready to begin the labor of switching from one job to another.
It’s more likely it’s dissatisfaction that moves you.
“You get to a point where the littlest things irritate you, and you know it’s time to start looking for your next move.” says Michelle Hancic, Head of People Science, APAC, at LinkedIn.
Data tells us that toxic work cultures are driving the great resignation.⁵
A toxic corporate culture is 10x more likely than compensation to trigger attrition, according to research from Donald and Charles Sull.
Culture starts with you.
Leaders shape the culture around them. From policy decisions to little interactions — every choice makes the work (and workplace) more rewarding, or less satisfying for others.
The clearest strategy to lower turnover? Better leadership.
This is the next challenge for HR. Not re-christening the great resignation, but de-toxifying corporate culture, rethinking the work of distributed teams, and equipping leaders to lead.
You signal. They signal. I signal. We all signal.
Everything communicates, how we speak, what we look like, and where we are. Those signals make up a story for others. They’re a raft of micro-expressions, verbal tics, and non-verbal cues that inform others about you.
Your car is first in the parking lot, and last to leave. What are you signaling? Either you have no life, or you’re bucking for a promotion.
You are at your desk, engrossed in a spreadsheet. What are you signaling? That you are working hard and not interruptible.
You’re heading to the coffee machine. You’re signaling that you’re now interruptible.
On the way back, a colleague is at their desk, laughing and chatting with another. You walk past, and they look and smile at you. What are they signaling? That you are welcome into the conversation.
You’re not at your desk; your boss looks across to where you usually sit. You’re signaling that you may be in a meeting.
If it happens around lunchtime — you’re signaling you’re at lunch.
Your boss is in the conference room, meeting with other colleagues — a signal of a meeting you are not invited to.
The conference room has shades drawn, suits from different departments enter, looking serious. More suits with Mckinsey bags arrive. A signal that big changes are going on.
In the “before times”¹ of the office, we signaled. All. The. Time.
In the “ready now”/ “ready next” conversations that happen in HR’s hushed hallways, that collection of signals had as much weight as formal job performance.
Those signals made you stand out.
Or, they led to comments, “she needs to be more strategic.” Or “he lacks executive presence.” Or “they need more seasoning” — vague posturing that something doesn’t quite fit.
No signal from you can mean no opportunity.
Nick Bloom, a professor of economics at Stamford, backs this up. Admittedly, it’s pre-pandemic research². In his 2015 study of remote vs. in-office work, he found that people working from home were 13% more productive. But, according to Bloom, “promotion rates plummeted, with roughly half the promotion rate compared to those in the office.”
Intuitively, that makes sense.
The lack of face time syncs with Pymetrics data. Organizational psychologists dug in and found three traits that significantly affect hybrid work: Focus — your concentration style as you tackle work; Attention — your approach to new information and distractions; and Fairness — your perception of the equity of situations.
Of those traits, senior leaders differ in Focus and Fairness.
Senior leaders like interruption and multitasking to their teams’ preference of focused work and single-tasking. More tellingly, Senior leaders are more critical than accepting when it comes to fairness. In short, they don’t trust. They want to see others doing their share of the work and have no natural inclination to trust that the work will get done.
Signaling can help you bridge the trust gap. And that shouldn’t be new news.
“Boss Keys” have been around since the days of the Apple II — keyboard shortcuts that let you quickly switch screens from solitaire to spreadsheet — for use when you hear an approaching observer. Casual Fridays (read about them in history books) caused panic among a legion of middle managers trying to mix the right sartorial level of “casual” with “promotable.”
All of it because our hindbrains sensed signaling was important.
It’s a survival and advancement function. According to Iona Cristea, who studies remote work, and authored the paper, Get Noticed and Die Trying: Signals, Sacrifice, and the Production of Face Time in Distributed Work, these signals matter.
According to Cristea, you get positive outcomes when others observe you at work, “because it is a strong signal of commitment to the job, the team and the organization.”
Scary, if you work from home.
There are multiple ways to signal. We just have to be intentional about it.
Everything communicates. Your calendar. Your zoom room. How you handle email and chat, the presentations you give, and how you use social media are all signaling and more important in the hybrid world.
Think of your calendar as an always-on signaling device.
Take control of it. A calendar stuffed full of meetings signals two things: a) you are busy, or b) you have lost control of your own time. An empty calendar signals you aren’t working on anything particularly important — even when you are.
Use your calendar to signal.
Signaling requires you (and your team) to develop two habits: Blocking time on your calendar, and encouraging people to look at others’ calendars.
Get to grips with timeboxing.
First, acknowledge work will fill up available time and space, and understand it’s easier to manage time and space (on your calendar) than work.
Start with a few basics. If your company emphasizes work/life balance, then decide your working hours, and block time outside of work for life. “Enable working hours” on Google Calendar, or “work hours” in Outlook.
If you eat, put “lunch” in your schedule. Add in a break in the morning and afternoon — list it as “catch-up time” or “buffer”
You don’t want meetings to run into one another. In the old days of the office, you had the convenience of physical distance from one conference room to another. The walk down the corridor and up the stairs took time. That walk allowed you to reset, focus for the next meeting and hit the restroom on the way. Substitute the walk with “speedy meetings” on Google Calendar or “shorten appointments and meetings” in Outlook.
Changing this setting gives you five to ten minutes back, turning a sixty-minute meeting into a fifty-minute one.
Now you’re ready to timebox.
The existential question for work: Are you there to do the work or to coordinate the work? Employees spend more of their time (58%) coordinating their work than working³. We need to increase “focus time” and reduce “meeting time.”
Nir Eyal, the author of Indistractible, calls these two work types “reflective work” and “reactive work.” Reactive work is “being on call and reacting to others'” (your bosses) “needs via calls, texts, and emails.” Reflective work is the work that needs focused time. It’s the research, deep thinking, writing, and planning — the work.
You are the owner of your work, and your first responsibility is to set aside time to do it. The meeting requests, emails, and messages (coming from other people) will spread like wildfire through your calendar if you let it.
Take your time back. Timebox.
The prevailing advice from psychologists and productivity gurus is that it’s a good idea to turn your camera off in a Zoom meeting⁴. It’s also a signal. Given that managers struggle with trust, it’s time to rethink how you show up in a meeting.
Don’t blame bandwidth. Switch the camera on.
According to a study by Vyopta, a company that monitors and analyzes virtual meetings, showing up counts. If you don’t show up on camera, your boss doesn’t think you have a long-term future with the company. Execs believe that people who frequently turn off their cameras probably aren't paying attention.⁵
How you show up is a signal.
It’s your choice how you show up in a meeting. You had that same choice for how you dressed for office work. In this case, you choose whether to send a photo-avatar of yourself instead of a live feed of your smiling face. And people judge.
Room rater is a harsh twitter feed judging the bookcases and backsplashes of TV talent. What they say about talking heads, like this harsh review of Lady Gaga’s zoom game, your colleagues are thinking about you.
Your language — and how you write — is a signal.
Where does your communication sit on the spectrum? Corporate and clinical with a dash of institutional? Or a little more human? Is it “office speak” — polished, sterile, and peppered with large words, or “weekend speak” — being authentic, communicating, and connecting? Hybrid work has erased the line.
Language is a technology, and how we use it matters.
The words we string together make our other communication technologies — Salesforce, Snapchat, and SharePoint — work. We use language to present ideas, transmit information and connect. From Fax-die-hards to Emailers, Slackers, and Tik-Tockers; everyone uses and evolves language:
So if you write sterile emails with big words, you’re doing it wrong!
The purpose of communication is not to pass work from one to-do list to another. Work on your writing. Use weekend speak, not sanitized corporate speak. Emojis and exclamation points are 👌🏽!!!
Your presentation is your time to shine.
They’re hard enough when you’re all in the same room. They’re even harder when people are remote. Hardest of all when you have a mix of attendees live and via zoom.
Here, you have to get your point across.
It’s your chance to signal that you are “more strategic.” Or you have “executive presence” in spades. That you have enough “seasoning.”
Make sure the story is well-structured. Death by PowerPoint isn’t an option. You have to engage people in a format that isn’t easy to do so. Think about the best way to tell your story authentically, and speak to your audiences’ listening.
It’s not just showing up, it’s how you show up.
Many people have hidden gems in the way they speak and write — turns of phrase and word choice that light up a sentence. They illuminate meaning. They trigger the flashlight moment when your idea takes hold in someone else’s mind. They are the earworms we easily hear when others use them.
One snag — we’re usually completely unaware of our own!
Become a conscious magpie about these phrases. When you notice someone catching the ear with a great turn of phrase, note it. Can you use or repurpose for yourself? Do the same when you notice someone positively responding to your own words.
Dull and boring is worth studying too.
Role-models come in all shapes and sizes. Anti-role models — people who manifest behavior that makes you want to do the exact opposite — do too. Are there some that consistently mangle the message, or drain the most exciting initiatives of sparkle? Ask yourself how they do it.
Is there something you can avoid?
We’re not talking TikTok, turning you into an Insta “influencer” or chatting with your grandma on Facebook. We’re talking about LinkedIn. LinkedIn has evolved beyond a digital resume. Your profile, your posts, and your comments on LinkedIn signal how you show up for work, who you work with, and what you’re interested in.
LinkedIn is bigger than you think.
In 2022, LinkedIn had 810 million members, nearly a third from the US, 85% of those members accessing the platform more than once per week. It is no surprise LinkedIn is responsible for 82% of social media B2B leads.
It’s also an ideal place for you to signal your expertise, and to learn.
Two reasons make LinkedIn the signaling platform of choice for you and your business. First, social fabric — the connections inside and outside of the organization. Second, selling — like it or not, all businesses sell stuff, and you are part of that equation.
It’s a place to build connections.
Jaime Teevan, Chief Scientist at Microsoft, said of remote work, “[it] caused a shift to asynchronous communication and made people’s collaboration networks more siloed.” — while close team connections strengthen, social connections across teams, and outside the company, shrink. Not good, when most get our work done with, or through other people. As a professional forum, LinkedIn is a way to share ideas, learn, and make new connections.
Think of it as an always on conference, without the hassle of the flights.
The pandemic has changed how we buy and sell, especially in B2B. According to Gartner, much of the modern buyer’s journey — from “we need to do something”, to “what exactly do we need this to do?” to “we need to get everyone on board” — is spent without speaking to the seller. In fact, only 17% of that time is spent meeting with potential suppliers. When there are multiple suppliers to speak to, that time dips to 5-6%. The majority of the purchase journey (27%) is spent researching online.
Lenwood Ross, CEO of Accelery, puts it like this, "LinkedIn is the growth engine for business. It's a new way to go back to an old thing, business built on relationships, and getting to know people."
Everything signals. Be intentional about it.
With these words, former comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy set a path to becoming one of the world's most respected and admired leaders.
However, leaders use words all the time. "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home” declared the CEO of Digital Electronics Corporation back in 1977. More recently the last CEO of Blockbuster declared that Netflix is "not even on the radar screen in terms of competition."¹
Leaders commonly make bold statements about addressing strategic and cultural challenges. They then fail to take the follow-up actions to practice what they preach.
Effective and successful leaders don’t just declare. They demonstrate.
Zelenskyy is a perfect example of this.
Since that bold statement, he has demonstrated what fassforward considers to be the four pivotal elements of leadership: Ethics, Vision, Reality and Courage.
As individuals, we default towards certain elements more than others. fassforward refers to this as Thinking Patterns.²
Ethics is about people. It’s leaders who earn your trust. They are fair and principled, and make the commitment to listen to and understand you. It's the "should be" of leadership. Think Mother Theresa.
Vision is about possibility. It's leaders who explore options and set direction. They define what's important in a reasoned, systemic way. They inspire you. It’s the ‘could be’ of leadership. Think Martin Luther King Jr.
Reality is about data. These leaders face facts and explore evidence. They define the plan and detail ‘how’ it’s going to be done. It’s the ‘is’ of leadership. Think Dwight D Eisenhower.
Courage is about action. It’s leaders who take-charge and make bold moves. They set the ‘when’, do what’s difficult, and encourage you to take risks. It’s the ‘will be’ of leadership. Think Malala Yousafzai.
In Part I of this article, we’ll explore how Ukraine’s leader has been demonstrating Ethics and Vision, and how you can do the same in the workplace. In Part 2, we’ll review Reality and Courage.
It would have been easy for Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept the offer for safe passage, and continue to lead Ukraine's resistance from a protected area.
Instead, he understands that great leaders lead from the front. Zelenskyy's first priority is to the people of Ukraine. By staying in Kyiv as the primary target of Russia's initial invasion, he demonstrated to the Ukrainian people that "our weapon is our truth. And the truth is that this is our land, our country, our children. And we will defend all of that."
Notice the lack of "I's." It's all about "our" and "we."
Zelenskyy is demonstrating on a daily basis that his primary commitment is to protect and advocate for his people. He is touring destroyed towns to meet survivors, and visiting the make-shift hospitals to thank injured soldiers.
Another aspect of ethics in leadership is showing vulnerability.
During his frequent addresses to governments across the world and in public interviews, Zelenskyy is demonstrating the human side of leadership. He is showing his emotions, admitting mistakes, and opening up about his relatively young age (44).
One of his most vulnerable moments was when he described to the US Congress how his heart has stopped just like those of "more than 100 children" who had been killed at that point.
His ethical call to action is clear: we need weapons, and if you support the concept of freedom, it is your moral obligation to help us.
Like Zelenskyy, we need to earn the trust of the people we lead.
A Forbes review article concluded that empathy tops the list of leadership attributes coming out of COVID.³ Work-related burnout was at record levels before 2020, and has only increased since. Effective leaders are embracing the human side of leadership; ie ethics.
However, that means different things to different people.
Many leaders assume this equals scheduling more 1 on 1s, connecting personally, and making meetings about more than just work. While this approach works for some, it does not work for all. Leaders need to take the time to understand how much “Touch” individuals on their teams not only need, but want. Different team members need different demonstrations of human leadership.
How about demonstrating vulnerability in the workplace?
The perfect leader does not exist. Embracing the human side of leadership, shows that you too are human. When you’re transparent about personal challenges and the mistakes you’ve made, you become more relatable to your team. You provide them the freedom to do the same. According to Patrick Lencioni in the “Five Dysfunctions of a Team”: “Teams who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation of trust.” ⁴
Here are some ideas on how to connect with your team (even if remote).
Zelenskyy laid out a clear vision to the people of Ukraine from the outset of the war:: "The enemy will use all available forces to break the resistance of Ukrainians. We Ukrainians are a peaceful nation.
But if we remain silent today, we will be gone tomorrow!"
Zelenskyy successfully outlined the potential consequences of Russian aggression not only to his people, but to the world. ”There is no longer someone else’s war. None of you can feel safe when there is a war in Ukraine, when there is a war in Europe.”
He brilliantly borrowed from a great visionary, Martin Luther King Jr., and his "I Have a Dream" speech, to say "I have a need." He has systematically and consistently made the case for weapons and other support if a "Free Ukraine" is going to survive. The result has been billions of dollars in arms, funds and other resources from around the world that have provided Ukraine with a fighting chance.
Most importantly, he has never wavered from his vision of peace.
Zelenskyy's vision is focused more on ending the violence vs. the defeat of Russia. "It’s a victory when the weapons fall silent and people speak up." He recognizes that conversation is the most powerful weapon. He has consistently called for negotiations with Putin as the quickest path to ending the massacre of innocent people. “I was ready for (negotiations with Putin for) the last two years. And I think that without negotiations, we cannot end this war.”
Vision is as important in the workplace as it is on the battlefield; especially in this new hybrid world.
According to CNBC, 77% of US companies are adopting a hybrid work model. Many of the leaders we coach are being given the liberty to work with their teams to define what their hybrid world will look like. Vision is not just about being an “ideas person” it’s about exploring options, collaboration and setting direction.
The best way to promote more vision is to provide more downtime (for yourself and your team). Post COVID, we are having even more meetings and less downtime than before.⁵ Yet, we are at our most visionary when we are not in meetings.⁶
Once you have a great idea, you need to earn advocacy for it.
Successful visionaries embrace the importance of marrying their vision with effective storytelling. We believe the foundations of Structure, Word and Pictures are the key to telling your story. And it’s not about a Jerry McGuire moment, at least not at first.
Announcing your vision at a town hall or emailing it company-wide at 2 am is not the answer.
To be effective, your vision needs to be communicated individually to key stakeholders. And each conversation needs to be tailored to the way they think. Set up 1 on 1s, share your vision, get stakeholder feedback, and then incorporate their proposed changes to earn advocacy for your vision.
Zelenskyy's daily addresses to his people or a leader in the workplace tailoring how they connect with team members share this common thread: leadership, and the qualities that embody leadership, are best demonstrated through conversations followed by actions to back them up.
In part 2 of this article, we will review the 2 other key elements of leadership: Reality and Courage.
Ironically, the truism that change is the only constant, is thousands of years old. It predates the Colosseum, the founding of the United States, and the world’s oldest business.¹ Change is a fact of life.
Although change is constant, we have a love-hate relationship with it.
Some change we love: A new friend, a wedding, or welcoming a child into the world. All change, and all entered into the ‘happy’ side of the ledger. Then there’s the change we don’t like.
Humans are creatures of habit, and our habit is to worry about that change. We’re hard-wired to do it. Change represents a fear of the unknown, a loss of control, a loss of status, or extra effort. It exposes a potential lack of competence or loss of face.
It’s the monster hiding under the bed.
Change does not equal change management.
Change Management is consulting-speak for the programmatic organizational propaganda that pulls through a big initiative. It’s the communication plan, the wrangling of stakeholders, rollout dates, and identifying change champions.
If you’ve invited McKinsey into the building, or you’re rolling out an ERP system, change management seems like a reasonable safeguard on your investment, but it’s not change.
Change is the swirl of life, and of progress.
For example, the great reset has brought about a sweeping rethink in people’s attitudes to work, and the regular Kool-Aid doesn’t taste as sweet.
This new attitude makes the leader’s role, not one of change management, but of leading through change.
If human nature is an immovable object, change is an unstoppable force.
Like it or not, change is winning. That’s why you’re reading this on a screen and not paper. It’s why millions switched to remote work and won’t go back. It’s why automation beats stagnation.
Change is how businesses compete; we just call it innovation.
That’s the good kind of change. It’s the force that brought us contactless payments, smart phones, and AI. It’s the reinvention of process in your business or the drive to digital transformation. Without it, we would still be writing checks, making phone calls through a copper wire, or counting with an abacus.
But it never feels easy.
We regularly ask our clients “what causes these tangles?” What causes the swirl of change? — the days where things don't go in a straight line. Where there's a sudden rock, hurled from stage left; when things go awry.
The answer: It’s the pile-on of too many projects competing for too few resources, compounded by changing priorities, and short-term decisions. It’s our built-in need to add stuff to the list, not take things away.
The larger the company, the softer the focus. Biting off too much to comfortably chew becomes the norm.
Change is inevitable.
It’s vital to the continuation of your company, but we get stressed when there is too much of it. The great reset has allowed people a moment to re-examine the role their work (and all that change) has in their lives.
Now leaders have a choice about what to do about change.
For leaders caught between the immovable object and unstoppable force, it’s time to rethink how we lead through change.
Imagine innovation as a stream that moves the business forward. It’s fine when the stream is smooth, and the flow is steady. Now see change as a bubbling, swirling, roiling pool of water. The bubbles, swirls, and roils are adverse change: The month-long preparation for a company kickoff with a last-minute change of direction from the CEO. The new marketing positioning and Ad campaign, pipped to market by the competition. The key employee that suddenly quits.
It’s all too much. A tangle in your best-laid plans. A knot in the middle of your transformation.
If we didn’t have change, we wouldn’t need leadership. We could just get by with good, old-fashioned, plain talkin’ management.
Leading through change is the skill of balancing the negative stress of change — especially in a new, distributed work environment — with the positive benefit that transformation brings.
Frequent change is not a comfortable place. It’s stressful. Exhausting.
Outcomes can help us with the balance of change. For leaders, they help us keep an eye on the prize. For teams, they’re a way of navigating through change.
Outcomes are why we come to work. They’re the success stories. The new product launch, the successful end of a quarter, or the onboarding of a new teammate. Successful outcomes keep us moving forward, and they allow us to innovate and be creative along the way.
Jeff Bezos gives us an excellent example of outcome thinking. When asked, “what does the future look like?” he replied, “I don’t know. But that’s the wrong question to ask — a better question is what won’t change in the future.”
“And [talking about Amazon] I know that customers will always want wider selection, cheaper prices, and faster delivery.”
“That won’t change. We can place bets around that. We can invest around that.”
That is a striking example of outcome-thinking — a way of navigating through change and keeping an eye on the big picture.
An outcome is something that [blank] will always want. Where [blank] is your customer, the business, or another stakeholder. It’s a translation of a North Star that is always visible. Remember, you can only see stars part of the time — on a clear night. That’s the problem with North Stars in business. It’s difficult to translate your day-to-day activities into that strategy or North Star.
So it goes with goal-setting. Most goal-setting is built around solving a problem. That’s worthwhile, but who is to say you are solving for the right problem? That’s where outcomes come in.
An evergreen outcome — like managing the cost down in your call center — is something you will always be solving problems for. It’s more powerful when paired with other evergreen outcomes — like putting a smile on every customers’ face.
These outcomes allow you to line up work and teams against them. Teams can collectively set goals against them and collaborate.
In a hybrid world or distributed organization, they serve as an alignment aid to ensure that everyone is working, semi-autonomously together, towards the same North Star.
There's wisdom in children’s books.
When Winnie the Pooh uttered “I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.” he launched a thousand self-help ships. Legions of blogs and books celebrate Winnie’s wisdom courtesy of A.A. Milne. To me that boils down to being understood, being persuasive, and being expansive.
Let’s dig into Part 2 of our journey — persuasion.
Persuasion — the noble art of allowing someone else to have it your way, takes its roots from the Greeks and Romans. Young men were taught to stand in the forum and persuade. Their tool was rhetoric, and their professors some of history’s great philosophers and persuaders.
One of them was Quintilian.¹ He advised avoiding excessive slickness, smoothness, or polish, because excessive gloss “makes the judge suspicious” and more likely to get forensic with your statements.
2000 years ago the Greeks and Romans anticipated the guidance of Pooh. Long words hinder persuasion.
They had their own term for what we call ‘baffling with bullshit’ — ‘Skotison’. The ancient Greek word meaning ‘to darken’. It meant deliberately trying to tie the audience in a knot with lots of unlovely jargon— a foul move in the game of persuasion.
Here instead are a few rhetoric-approved ways of persuading that would be Pooh-approved as well.²
Sometimes, there’s no better word to use but the technical term.
Take “Cognitive Dissonance”. It’s one of those phrases that creeps into conversation but not everyone understands. When you need to use such a phrase, and can’t think of a simpler form, nail it down. Otherwise, you cause your audience to feel cognitive dissonance 😀, and by that I mean the suspicious feeling you get in your mind when things just don’t add up. (nailed it!)
Make life easy for the audience, and if a word or phrase benefits from being neatly defined and nailed down, get out the nails.
Supreme Court Justices are (rumored) to have a sense of humor. They ‘Bob’.
Many judges and lawyers do it.³ ‘Bobbing’ is the practice of slipping a few Bob Dylan lyrics into rulings. The late Justice Scalia was fond of “Times, they are a-changing”, and even Samuel Alito was recently caught slipping a quick Bob into a case on religious liberty.⁴ When you quote a famous lyric, you access the goodwill felt for that performer, make yourself appear more human, and make the audience more open to your case.
The pattern doesn’t just apply to Justices quoting music legends. Authors, business leaders, and (respected) world leaders can be usefully quoted too.
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How did you sleep last night? — like... a log? A baby? The dead?
Human speech is peppered with similes and metaphors. They make our language visual, easier to understand, and pleasing to the ear. The trouble comes, when we stand to ‘make a presentation’, — that natural human warmth evaporates. We speak like robots, as stiff as boards, and as bland as rice.⁵ We also suffer an urge to impress the audience by trotting out as many long words as possible.
If pictures paint a thousand words, a few well-placed similes or metaphors make sentences simple.
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I used to get this on my mathematics (I’m English) homework at school — “Show your work”. (This was always a relief because the alternative would be “See me”).
As well as simple words being an important part of persuasion, simple transparent logic is essential too. If you see the audience counting on their fingers and toes, trying to disentangle your line of logic, then you might not be winning the argument.
You can untangle your argument for them.
The simplest way to do this is to make a statement, and then ask out loud and of yourself, “Why do I say this?” You get to answer your own question.
For example: “Simple words and clean logic are the best persuaders. Why do I say this? Because when speakers and ideas are easy to understand, audiences become more open.”
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Let’s leave the last word in this argument to one of America’s great persuaders — Benjamin Franklin. “...nothing should be expressed in two words that can be expressed in one… but that the whole would be short as possible, consistent with clearness.”
Even geniuses, it would seem, follow the wisdom of a bear with very little brain, and that will bring us next week to our final blog, and how to be expansive.⁶
There's wisdom in children’s books.
When Winnie the Pooh uttered “I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.” he launched a thousand self-help ships. Legions of blogs and books celebrate Winnie’s wisdom courtesy of A.A. Milne. To me that boils down to being understood, being persuasive, and being expansive.¹
Let’s dig into being understood.
Pooh is absolutely right — we do not like complex words — or at least not when they’re aimed at us.
When it comes to actually using complex words on other people though, we forget this fact. Here’s a startling stat: 86% of us admit we deliberately swap simple words for more complex ones — just because we think it makes us seem smarter.² It doesn’t.
In fact half the people who do this, also admit to swapping simple words for more complex ones when they don’t even understand the complex words they’re grabbing at!
The more someone makes us work to get their meaning, the less we trust them. Especially so when simple ideas are presented with complex words. Wondering why something looks like it should be easy but sounds as tangled as a city sewer system makes the audience smell a rat. The resulting brain-clash turns your audience away from your message.³ This is why ‘Blinding with Science’ lives at the lowest levels of the evidence stack.
When something is presented cleanly and simply, it’s easier to process.
When something is easier to process, we’re more inclined to absorb it, to believe it, and to actually like the messenger.⁴ Language complexity is only one aspect. The way something is written also plays a role. Some fonts are harder to read than others. Whether your message is written or spoken, the more you can drive out complexity, the more your audience leans in.
As Einstein said: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Pooh would approve.
Become a complexity hunter. Take pleasure in puncturing the pompous. Seek and swap-out complex words in stories, presentations, and even emails. Such words are initially easier to spot in their written form. Over time, you’ll develop a sense for when they’re appearing in your spoken words as well.
Every time you practice swapping the tricky for the straight-forward, you take pity on the audience — you make life easier for them.
Storytelling 101 — keep it simple. Simple stories are understood and acted on. Along with surplus language however, we also pack communications with surplus details.
What’s the key nugget you want to get across? Delete details that detract. As an editor I once worked for would yell tell us almost daily: “If in doubt, cut it out.”
More time is always better, right? Wrong.
When highways get jammed, another lane is added. All is great for a while, until more space brings more traffic and the highway just jams again.
More time seldom breeds greater clarity. Just greater traffic.
Jargon is infectious. We catch it from our colleagues.
At the risk of mixing my children’s stories, think about Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’. They were fabulous yet oddly invisible garments woven by con-men. It just took one convenient fool to declare “Oh yes — they’re marvelous”, and everyone else quickly followed suit. Check out this article on The BandWagon Effect to find out why.⁵
Jargon works the same way.
No one wants to be the person who says: “Actually — I don’t see it…”. We wait for someone else to take the plunge first. If no-one does though, the jargon lives on.
Making the jargon juggler explain their point in simple terms is the way to get to clarity. It does, however, take a bit of bravery to prick the jargon bubble.
We’ll explore exactly how to burst that balloon in our next article — “Persuading Pooh”.
Our ability to work as teams, or even function as a team, relies on the strength of our social capital — the relationships between people.
Hatching ideas, spotting opportunities, and information sharing all stem from social capital. Some of the upsides are tangible, others intangible. They are all attributable to the personal relationships and networks we build within and outside organizations. It describes the personal connections that build trust among employees, and enhance company performance.¹
Creating or holding on to social capital in remote work environments is challenging. Without it your long-term success is at risk.
In his article Great Reset, my colleague, Dave Frost, states that in 2021 nearly one third of Americans left their jobs.
This trend continues. Many factors fuel the Great Resignation, but ineffective leadership is near the top. Most leaders agree strong relationships make organizations more effective. Ineffective leadership makes maintaining those relationships remotely even more difficult. This problem is exacerbated when onboarding new employees.
While social networks facilitate existing employees’ chances of success, new employees struggle with the question, “how do I get my network started?”
Social interactions build trust. Trust begins with the commitment we have as team members to the success of the social network. Consider back when we worked in the office. Getting together for lunch, weekly meetings, encounters in the hallway, were all common practices. We would get to know one another and get things done.
Technology gives people a unique ability to work together at a distance, but also risks a more isolated, siloed workforce.
Working from home reduced commutes and increased productivity, yet 40% of U.S. adults report they are struggling with mental health issues.²
Lack of human connection takes a toll. We are social creatures. Feeling socially connected, especially in an increasingly isolated world, is more important than ever. This means the benefits of social connectedness in the workplace shouldn’t be overlooked, and neither should the value of leaders who are as comfortable operating remotely as they are in person.
Only 20% of leaders however, are effective at leading virtually³
According to Stephanie Neal, director of DDI’s Center for Analytics and Behavioral Research. “CEOs acknowledge how underprepared their organizations are to meet the challenges of a more virtual, remote workplace.”⁴
Executives need to strengthen their virtual leadership skills. The place to start is by amping up relationships with team members.
In their 2001 article, “How to Invest in Social Capital,” Laurence Prusak and Don Cohen declared we were already at risk. They attributed that risk to “volatile and virtual times”.
They went on to say that volatility and virtuality erode relationships.⁵
21 years later the pandemic drove not only disruption, but a new reality of how we work. The disruption will eventually abate, but how we manage and collaborate has changed forever. Those of us who had established strong social networks prior to being sent home have been able to hang on to them — so long as everything remained stable. Move to a new job assignment, a new team, or a new boss however, and that social network is weakened.
For a quick start, my colleague Gavin McMahon offers simple advice for ramping up relationships with your employees.
While many aspects of work have changed in past years, for employees with tenure, the ability to maintain established social capital has not been one of them.
Relationships initially established in the office can thrive (and grow) just as well remote as when physical. Knowing where to find information and knowing the “players”, especially between functions, reduces the time and investment in maintaining social networks. Repeated interactions with these people then builds stability. This, in turn, opens the door for acquiring additional contacts, and increasing social capital still further. It is this connection between individuals inside and outside of the company that provides an economic advantage over those who are not so well-connected.
The challenge is keeping your tenured employees. Companies that value social capital understand that to retain their employees they need to invest in those employees.
Onboarding into a new work environment however, has its own set of challenges. For starters, you have no network and no social capital.
In a recent HBR article, what separates firms that do onboarding best — whether in-person or virtual — is that the work is intentional.⁶ It takes time to build a network — it takes time to build social capital. This is not a 30 day event. In fact some organizations confuse onboarding with orientation.⁷ Helping new employees build their social networks accelerates more thorough decision-making, increases their success, and improves your chances of retaining that employee.
How would you welcome, train and engage new employees in an in-person environment? Is it really so different when virtual?
"What's the future of work?"... "How will a return to office work?"... "How do we make hybrid work, work?"
I don't know the answer to any of those questions.
No one does.
If you poll academics and business professors, management gurus, CEOs and consultants, they’ll all tell you different things. This means no one knows. We've never done this before; we've never lived this before. And the honest ones will tell you that.
You, or me, have just as much chance of being correct in our predictions as the next guy or gal. We have to experiment our way through this and figure out what works. That's how we figure out the question.
And to do that, we have to anchor ourselves on what is true.
The fourth industrial revolution, and the revolution in the future of work, have both come at us at once.
Although consultants like to call them revolutions, the actual pace of change is relatively slow. The first industrial revolution took place across the course of 80 years. The fourth industrial revolution — of AI, automation, and extreme connectivity, is looming. We've been talking about the "future of work" since 1980 (although to be fair, it only really took off over the last eight years.)
Two years of Covid, and the ‘future of work’ has turned into ‘today’.
Industry reaction to a global pandemic was a massive accelerant to both revolutions.
The joke is that the biggest driver of Digital Transformation at your company is not your CEO or CIO; it's a tiny virus. Almost overnight, business responded. Workers worked from home. Zooming (and zoom fatigue) entered the vocabulary, and it worked.
The wave of one revolution crashes into the other. Patents for technology supporting remote and hybrid work more than doubled in 2020.
The work from home genie is out of the bottle. Employees don't want it put back.
There is no return to office date. You can't schedule 20th April 2022, pencil it in, and think, "ok, everything will go back to the way it was then."
When we all retire, we will think of our professional careers in two parts — before-COVID, and after-COVID. That bit in the middle, between pre and post, isn't a day; it isn't quick, it isn't easy. It will be chaotic. And we should be thinking in terms of years, not days.
There isn't a date when this will all "go back to normal."
Relax.
If you're in a large organization, fretting about how #hybridwork will work, then you don't have to outrun the bear. You do however have to outrun the competition. You don't have to be the first to figure this out, but you do have to be quick in your competitive category.
If you sell commercial real estate, it makes sense that you would value offices and work out of them. But if you're a tech play, and you compete against Google, or Twitter, or Snowflake for talent, you have to look at what they're doing and be better.
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