The Art Of Magazine - Volume 16

Why Leaders Shouldn’t Over-Rely on Big Data Martin Lindstrom

The Crazy Simple Way for Marketing to Adopt a Customer Mindset Ann Handley

Why Haters Are Your Most Important Customers Jay Baer

Why You Need to Get Over Yourself Kirstine Stewart​ SPR 17 $7.95 CDN Price: $7.95

VOLUME 16

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Diana

NYAD Find a Way

Leadership Development • Employee Engagement • Change Management • Career Transition • Recruitment

It’s reassuring

to know

sees

one organization

the

whole

picture.

Lee Hecht Harrison Knightsbridge helps organizations achieve their business objectives at every level, by helping people navigate change, improve performance and attain their career goals. Our expertise in Career Management & Transition, Talent and Leadership Development, and Recruitment provides unique perspectives on complex talent issues and challenges. With our technology-driven customized and scalable solutions, our clients can find, develop and deploy accountable, engaged talent, ready to achieve the organization’s business objectives.

With 29 offices across Canada, and over 300 offices in 60 countries worldwide, Lee Hecht Harrison Knightsbridge has the expertise and capability to support a single executive or transform an entire workforce.

For more information visit www.lhhknightsbridge.com

Achieve your aspirations.

AT TD, building great teams is our priority and expanding leadership opportunities for women plays a vital role. We have a strong network of thousands of women across Canada who are committed to connecting, encouraging and advising each other. We also support our employees as they balance responsibilities at work, in the community and at home.

“I believe that, as women, we have everything we need to be a smashing success. But the right attitude is essential to achieving our dreams.

Let’s focus on the opportunities, not the barriers, and go get it!”

Colleen Johnston, Group Head Direct Channels, Technology, Marketing and Real Estate

Where confidence and capability meet opportunity.

Year after year, TD is acknowledged on lists of Canada’s Best Places to Work. In 2016, TD was named as one of Canada’s Best Diversity Employers for the fifth year in a row. By recognizing your individual career goals, TD provides you with unique opportunities to grow, contribute and make a difference in every area of your life.

Find out more at TD.com/WIL

Bringing knowledge to life!

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CONTENTS

VOLUME 16

LEADERSHIP for WOMEN SEEING IS BELIEVING: THE IMPORTANCE OF VISIBLE ROLE MODELS IN GENDER EQUALITY Stephania Varalli

10

LEADERSHIP: DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH Rowena Chan and Nupi Zubair

13

GIRL POSITIVE Tatiana Fraser and Caia Hagel

16

WHY YOU NEED TO GET OVER YOURSELF Kirstine Stewart

18

LEVERAGING DISRUPTIVE TALENT Michelle Moore

21

SO WHY ARE WE STILL SO STRESSED OUT? Brigid Schulte

24

FIND A WAY Diana Nyad

LEADERSHIP

26

TRANSBOARDING Lisa Sterling

29

THE POWER OF GRATITUDE Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick

32

WHY LEADERS SHOULDN’T OVER-RELY ON BIG DATA Martin Lindstrom

16

29

THE POWER OF GRATITUDE

24 FIND A WAY

08

38

WHY HATERS ARE YOUR MOST IMPORTANT CUSTOMERS

62 34

USE THIS THEATRE TECHNIQUE TO IMPROVE YOUR NEXT MEETING Cathy Salit

37

TOP 4 LESSONS: THE ART OF LEADERSHIP Sir Ken Robinson

MARKETING

52 34

38

THE CRAZY SIMPLE WAY FOR MARKETING TO ADOPT A CUSTOMER MINDSET Ann Handley

40

7 STEPS TO DEFINE YOUR CONTENT CENTER OF EXCELLENCE Mitch Joel

44

THREE WAYS IN WHICH COGNITIVE IS TRANSFORMING MARKETING Zeynep Tolon

46

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S SECRET WEAPON: PERSISTENCE Ryan Holiday

49

WHY IT PAYS TO BE A COPYCAT [EVERYONE LIKES A COPYCAT] Jonah Berger

SALES

THE CRAZY SIMPLE WAY FOR MARKETING TO ADOPT A CUSTOMER MINDSET

52

WHY HATERS ARE YOUR MOST IMPORTANT CUSTOMERS Jay Baer

54

FINDING THE ELUSIVE DECISION MAKER. THEN WHAT? Jeffrey Gitomer

56

PIVOT TO A CUSTOMER-FIRST MINDSET Tiffani Bova

60

TOP 4 LESSONS: THE ART OF SALES Charles Duhigg

62

7 TOP SALES SKILLS OF A SUCCESSFUL SALES TEAM Carrie Millen

Queen’s Leadership Program Realize your leadership potential in this 5 day program.

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Founders’ Letter Perhaps the key to success is not having more.

CO-FOUNDERS

At The Art Of, we’re committed to bringing innovative thinking and varying business perspectives to the forefront. Most recently we’ve been fascinated by the work of Rice University Professor Scott Sonenshein. In his new book Stretch, he examines why some people and organizations succeed with so little, while others fail with so much.

The vast majority of businesses that we speak with on a daily basis describe success as having ‘more’. More money. More time. More employees. More reach. More likes. More followers. Perhaps ‘more’ is part of the problem, not the solution.

According to Sonenshein, you already have all of the tools you need to succeed, you just need to stretch. It can be incredibly freeing to stop worrying about what you don’t have and rather focus on leveraging what you already have in more effective and gratifying ways.

Scott Kavanagh Christopher Novais

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Joey Van Massenhoven

HOW TO REACH US The Art of Productions Inc. 46 Sherbourne Street 3rd Floor Toronto, Ontario Canada M5A 2P7

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The best way to start stretching is by asking a relatively simple question: What can I do with what I already have? By asking this question you can alleviate the pressure of having to get ‘more’ in order to do ‘more’.

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SEEING IS BELIEVING: The Importance of Visible Role Models in Gender Equality

By Stephania Varalli Co-CEO, Head of Media – Women of Influence I owe a lot of who I am to my mother.

When I was seven years old, she opened a Montessori school. In the years prior to her new venture she was a stayat-home mom, earning her Master of Education degree while chasing after two kids. My sister and I were part of her school’s first cohort, and so I spent three years with a principal who also happened to be my mom. This gave me the lucky advantage of seeing my first female role model in action. Every day was take your kid to work day.

Twenty-five years later and the school has grown immensely from its modest start. I look at my mother now and see a woman who is a successful entrepreneur, a highly regarded expert in her field, and, perhaps most important of all, she is someone who obviously loves what she does. I understand the fulfillment she gets from her career.

And I know about the challenges that it brings as well.

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LEADERSHIP for WOMEN

With my mother as a role model, it’s no surprise that I ended up on an entrepreneurial track myself. I got my feet wet in my first media venture in my twenties; spent six years as a companyof-one, traveling and working as a writer and editor; and I’ve been the coowner of Women of Influence for a little over a year. Each role has had positive and negative aspects, but I’m happy to say the upside has always won.

In my current role as co-CEO and head of media at Women of Influence, it’s easy for me to pinpoint my biggest perk: it is my job to hear the stories of incredible women, and to share them with our community and beyond. It’s very rewarding work. And, might I humbly suggest, it’s important.

By sharing the lessons and insights these role models have gained on their personal journeys, thousands more women get to benefit from the kind of inspiration and guidance that

I was lucky enough to grow up with every day. Plus, put simply: seeing is believing. When you see someone that is like you achieve a goal, it becomes much easier to believe that the same successful path is possible for you, too.

It could be a young girl dreaming of what she will be when she grows up, or a graduate starting off their career, or a middle manager aspiring to reach the senior executive level — they will all set their sights higher when they have someone to look up to. So if you think of these success stories as nothing more than entertainment, it’s time to look again; they are powerful tools in the push for gender equality.

As a woman with a long career in media, I might come across as a biased source. But there is plenty of evidence to support the impact of visible role models (beyond the swell of positivity I feel in the room after one of our Women of Influence events). A few

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It could be a young girl dreaming of what she will be when she grows up, or a graduate starting off their career, or a middle manager aspiring to reach the senior executive level — they will all set their sights higher when they have someone to look up to.

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years ago, a study co-authored by an MIT economist connected visible female leaders with the attitudes and ambitions of young women. It focused on a region of India that, through quotas, ensures one-third of village council leaders are female. Compared to villages with male politicians, having a woman in power had a huge impact on the aspirations of the local teen girls, as well as their parents — the gender gap concerning educational goals was completely erased among the adolescents, and reduced by 25% among the adults.

As the co-founder and secretary general of the Council of Women World Leaders, Laura Liswood is well-informed on the impact female leaders can have.

With more than twenty years working in diversity and inclusion, her expertise goes beyond the political sphere. When I ask her about the importance of role models, her enthusiasm is clear: “It’s enormously important, for women, for other historically out-of-power groups, to be able to say, ‘I can see myself doing that,’” she says. “We are constantly trying

to create this diverse workplace, but then the people whom you’re trying to attract look up to the top of the organization and don’t see people who look like them, and think, ‘I’m not sure I want to work here because I don’t see anyone that looks like me.’ It takes a much bigger leap of imagination for someone who doesn’t look like that to think, ‘I can get there, too.’”

Unfortunately, in today’s business and political landscape, there simply aren’t that many women at the top to look up to. Females make up less than 7% of global leaders, about 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs, and 16% of Canadian board directors, for example. Traditional media coverage of female leaders can often come with a gender-biased lens.

That’s why Women of Influence, and organizations like ours, need to work hard to ensure these stories are told.

With a focused and purposeful effort we can highlight those women who have made it. And that’s an invaluable asset for all those women who haven’t quite made it yet.

LEADERSHIP for WOMEN

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Leadership: DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH TWO GREAT LEADERS FROM TD SHARE THEIR THOUGHTS ON LEADERSHIP AND ACHIEVING SUCCESS

Rowena Chan Senior Vice President, Financial Planning

How do you define leadership?

For me, leadership is all about having the ability to inspire and align a team to come together around a shared vision.

By believing in a common goal, we bring out the best in our people, which makes us better equipped to work together, celebrate each other, and learn from one another.

What is the most rewarding part of your day?

I absolutely love interacting with people, learning from them, and finding ways to grow together. Sitting down one on one with someone to understand what they need to achieve their personal goals and uncovering how I can help them get where they want to go is the best part of my day. As a result, watching people advance in their career journey is the most rewarding part of my job.

What advice do you have for women starting out in their career?

You don’t know what you don’t know. Accept this and embrace new experiences, perspectives, and insights.

Being curious and genuine will help you learn what you need to learn and will help you see a wide array possibilities in your career journey. Without knowing what possibilities are out there, you may find yourself setting unnecessary limits to what you can achieve. By being curious and genuine, you can be deliberate in achieving your aspirations while positioning yourself to help others along the way.

take the time to put our employees first, giving them the tools and development they need to build a successful and meaningful career. This, in part, is fostered by a collaborative and inclusive environment that gives our employees the support and leadership they need and truly allows them to make a difference with the customers that they serve.

Why is TD a great place to work as an advisor?

TD is a place where your ambition is celebrated. While we are known for our customer-centric business model, we also

Facts about TD: • TD is the sixth largest bank in North America by branches and serves 24 million customers in locations in key financial centres around the world.

• TD has more than 80,000 employees who work in financial services, but also human resources, economics, technology, marketing, communications, legal, compliance and customer service.

• TD was included on the 2017 Bloomberg Financial Services Gender-Equality Index which benchmarks gender statistics, gender conscious product offerings, and external community engagement and employee policies and practices; and on the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index list, the benchmark for global leaders in economic, environmental and social responsibility.

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Nupi Zubair Regional Vice President, Financial Planning

How do you define leadership?

As I think about the number of leaders I have worked with throughout my 15+ years at TD, there are a handful of qualities that define great leadership to me. Those qualities include selfawareness and empathy, the ability to communicate with purpose, owning mistakes and being open to new ideas.

And a good sense of humour goes a long way, too.

What is the most rewarding part of your day?

I am relatively new to the Financial Planning business so I am actively seeking opportunities to learn the business while growing as a leader. A great day is spending time talking to my team to deepen my understanding of our business and operations, and getting to know my colleagues. I am particularly

inspired by the deep level of knowledge, ownership, and accountability my colleagues demonstrate each and every day.

What advice do you have for women starting out in their career?

My general advice, to both men and women, is to play an active role in shaping your career. Most of us will work 30+ years and spend a large part of our life at work; you could leave it to chance but given how much time we invest into work, I would encourage you to be thoughtful about what you want from your career. It will increase the chances that you enjoy the journey!

My advice to women is to not limit yourself based on your gender. I often hear from women peers, friends, and colleagues that they feel like they have

to pull back after having kids and while I can appreciate where that feeling is coming from (especially as a new mom), I sincerely believe that we underestimate our own ability.

Why is TD a great place to work as an advisor?

We have a unique model in our partnership with the rest of the bank.

Rather than focus solely on the investment needs, advisors are engaged with all areas of the bank to provide holistic solutions to their customer’s financial needs. As an advisor, this model positions you to be successful as it centers around deepening our relationship with our existing customer base. It also allows you to learn about other businesses within the bank and potentially develop a career journey you may not have considered.

TD is a great place to work for women • Women make up 37% of senior leaders and over one third of board members and 60% of the employee base.

• Women and men report equally high confidence in meeting their career objectives.

• TD has provided nearly $1 million in support of charities who work to advance and support women and girls.

• TD has an employee Women in Leadership network of nearly 12,000 people which offers mentoring, career development and encourages flexible work options.

• TD is expanding its wealth management platform and is adding nearly 400 financial planners and financial advisors by 2018 to help support the Women Investor Program.

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Girls are redefining and inventing new ways to be leaders.

We are amazed by how skillfully girls rise to leadership when they are given a chance and some support.

GIRL POSITIVE

By Tatiana Fraser and Caia Hagel

It’s really hopeful to imagine a world where girls are leaders. There is a growing call for women to take positions of power in corporate North America, as well as on political, cultural and economic fronts. In the corporate sector, mentoring programmes offer a pipeline for executive leadership to support the advancement of women to executive levels. In politics, similar movements are monitoring women’s involvement and are mandated to encourage and support women to enter the field. But it would be a mistake to think that just because Hillary Clinton, Arianna Huffington and Sheryl Sandberg are at the top, we have achieved our mission.

We need to imagine a future in which women are not just leading but also transforming outdated systems and co-creating the world. We need to harness women-led entrepreneurship VOLUME 16

to tackle our greatest social and environmental challenges. It’s not that women bring something “different” to the table; it’s that their experiences and vision, which are often anchored within the struggles of their communities, need to be front and center as we make systemic changes. When women take their place at the table in this critical work, society is better equipped to synthesize and respond to the fast-paced challenges of our era. It makes sense for us to nurture leadership, strength and self-advocacy in girls.

Girls are redefining and inventing new ways to be leaders. We are amazed by how skillfully girls rise to leadership when they are given a chance and some support. Leadership is everywhere. But it shows itself in a variety of ways, and it doesn’t always look like the traditional leadership models to which we’ve

LEADERSHIP for WOMEN

15

become accustomed, with a charismatic hero leading the way. It can be demonstrated in small gestures or big actions, in political domains and at the grassroots level, and in media, culture, arts and political activism. By digging deep into the roots of culture, girls bring meaning and transformation to outdated approaches and old, rusty systems. They see intersections between disciplines as part of their worldview. They are truly innovating.

Knowing how powerful and promising many young women already are in so many contexts and how they are growing more so each day, it’s incongruous to see how the picture all too often painted in popular culture, in newspapers and in our imaginations hangs on to the “girls are dangerous or in danger” narratives—as if girls are in trouble and not in control of themselves. Adults often lament about youth culture, believing that the emerging generations are not upholding the traditions of political engagement of activism started by previous generations.

And yet, when we stop and look around, an entirely different picture emerges. Girls are not “problems” waiting to be solved. Often, in fact, girls represent solutions. The power of girl leadership resides in the knowledge that sometimes problems need to be confronted in new ways. So much of what inspires girls to act grows out of issues that have affected them personally. Girls feel supported when

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LEADERSHIP for WOMEN

they break the isolation of their experiences and find a space where they can make sense of what is happening to them, and locate their experiences within a broader socio-political context. When they are able to do this, they can begin to focus on developing their insights and passions, and eventually transform some of these into action. If policy makers see youth only as objects of public policy, rather than as subjects who shape its formation, they are failing to get in on one of the world’s best kept secrets: that girls are citizens-inthe-making with an enormous amount to contribute—through ideas, mobilization of power and social-media visibility— to the growth of society and culture.

Supporting girls and young women as agents of change requires more than brand messaging that bills girls as “empowered”.

It demands more than commodifying girl power as if it is linked to a product, and more than a glossy international campaign that makes it seem as if it’s a fait accompli.

Real empowerment comes when we reframe girls’ challenges: from focusing on the individual girl to tackling the dynamics of the social, political and economic context she lives in. Real empowerment comes through recognizing and encouraging the girls who are devoted to making changes, big and small, and supporting their work financially and socially. Girls are an excellent investment.

Girls are not

We’re seeing “problems” waiting more to beand solved. more Often,that in fact, people girls represent want to The solutions. work for an power of girl organization leadership resides that shares in the knowledge their values. that sometimes

problems need to be confronted in new ways.

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“Fresh, funny and practical...

Shows how the habits of successful artists can help anyone become smarter, faster and better.”

—Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of Smarter Faster Better and The Power of Habit

everyonesanartist.ca

Why You Need to

GET OVER YOURSELF Kirstine Stewart

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LEADERSHIP for WOMEN

To be shy or too quiet in work situations means you hide who you are, and, more significantly, hide what you think and what you know.

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When men and women gather for a work meeting a remarkable ritual often unfolds. Perhaps because the boardroom table was historically the domain of men, an ancient, almost tribal dynamic takes hold. The men jostle and posture. They speak freely and unprompted. They interrupt each other, often talking over one another, talking over the woman. I have been that woman. I’ve been the one who has offered up an idea, only to have it drowned out and then hear it repeated almost word for word a minute later by, say, John. This then cues Richard to say, “John makes an excellent point!”

And while I seethe in silence, the men move into mid-ritual, reinforcing and reframing each other’s views. Like a game, they toss a ball of ideas around the table, and flex their personal capital.

Women are still newcomers to this game. And while we can be terrific at reading a room, we don’t always read it well in such moments. We’re too stumped by being talked over, or having our idea hijacked, to join in. Yet it’s in those moments, like it or not, that you have to get over yourself and jump in.

Bringing an idea to the table doesn’t mean you “own” it. The team owns it, adds to it, debates it, fleshes it out. If you have a great idea, set it free; if you hear a good idea, back it up and bring additional value to it. The meeting table isn’t a place to go it alone, but a place where you anchor yourself as part of a team.

Yet it isn’t easy, and we women don’t get over ourselves enough. We fall back on another traditional pattern,

reminiscent of the classroom, when you put your hand up and waited to be called upon (reinforced by what you’ve seen happen to the woman who speaks first). And while you wait, you formulate precisely what you want to say, only to find that when it’s your “turn,” you have missed the moment

or someone else already has made the point. Fretting over saying just the right thing and fearing saying the wrong thing, women can end up saying nothing at all.

I know this particular insecurity intimately. Having so often been the newbie, the only woman and/or the youngest exec at the table, I have felt

so out of place it robbed me of my voice.

I was shy, too careful about what I’d say, or how I’d say it. More than once, my bosses told me during performance reviews that they felt that I knew more than I was contributing.

Women do not have a lock on being shy. Men suffer too. Strangely, given my chosen career, I have no desire to be at a podium. I take a deep breath before presenting my ideas and making jokes in front of large crowds of people. But it’s my job. And if I’m going to do my job well, I have to pull myself together and contribute.

In the workplace, I’ve been able to overcome shyness by defining it for what it is—a kind of self-indulgence. To be shy or too quiet in work situations means you hide who you are, and, more significantly, hide what you think and what you know. By not speaking up, you don’t just deprive yourself of a voice at the table, you also abdicate contributing to the group. And that means you’re actually not doing your job. After all, if you’ve been asked to the table in the first place, your colleagues and your bosses believe you have something valuable to contribute. The invitation is to participate and by taking that seat, you have accepted. When people don’t share to their full potential, the group loses out—particularly in these times.

As the digital age prompts widespread downsizing, every voice matters. It’s not just the views of the leader that are critical, but those of every member of the team. The cards you keep close to the vest might well be the answer to a problem, or a map of the best way forward.

Excerpted from Our Turn by Kirstine Stewart. Copyright © 2015 KAS Creative Inc. Published by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

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LEVERAGING DISRUPTIVE TALENT THREE KEY STEPS TO GETTING RESULTS

By Michelle Moore VP & National Practice Lead, Executive Career Solutions, Lee Hecht Harrison Knightsbridge

There is no question that terms like ‘digital disruption’ and ‘innovation’ have become buzz words used daily in most boardrooms and c-suite offices. Competing in the new normal requires organizations to find talent who do things in different ways. The challenge is however, that many of these disruptors often struggle to work in the constraints of a traditional organization.

In order to achieve desired results, business leaders need to make sure that they:

• Find the right type of disruptors.

• Engage disruptive talent in a way that aligns to their organizational commitment and readiness.

• Invest sufficient energy and effort to maximize the engagement and success of disruptive talent.

FINDING THE RIGHT DISRUPTORS Not all disruptors are created equally, and investing in the wrong type of talent can cause significant chaos and negatively impact business performance and organizational culture.

Many organizations are beginning to look for people who can spot opportunities to do things differently and implement their ideas.

While generating ideas and getting things done are both critical, disruptive talent who can truly have a positive impact on business results also need to have skills and competencies like self-confidence, resilience, the ability to build relationships and the flexibility required to work within the constraints of an organization.

ENGAGING DISRUPTORS

DISRUPTIVE TALENT

To successfully engage this newly sought after type of talent, organizations need a strategy to define how they will engage with talent. Many leaders think that the only option is to hire disruptors, but there are a number of different ways to get started leveraging disruptors.

To determine the right engagement method (i.e., whether to involve, borrow or hire), business leaders first need to take a look at two important factors:

IDEAS Spots opportunities to do things in radically different ways

1. Commitment to Innovation and Change In order to maximize the return on the investment in disruptive talent, organizations first need to ensure that there is senior leader commitment for innovation. That commitment must include dedicated funding for innovation.

If an organization can’t check off these two mission critical items, they can still leverage disruptors. For example, they can engage external disruptors in idea generation activities like hackathons, or crowdsource their ideas through technology platforms. An organization can also consider forming an advisory board to help guide their evolution, borrow talent from more innovative companies to work on specific projects or consider trying a strategic interim position to test the waters.

SHORT-TERM RESULTS Gets things done quickly and delivers business value

2. Readiness for Change Organizations must also consider their overall readiness for this productive type of disruption. Many organizations may be committed to doing things differently, but simply are not ready as a result of factors like:

• Their culture (e.g., level risk tolerance/risk management capabilities, agility, customer centricity, learning orientation, etc...)

• Innovation maturity (e.g., existence of formal strategy, process, governance, etc.…)

SUSTAINED INNOVATION AND RESULTS Can cope with the constraints of an organization

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• Technology readiness (e.g., technology investment, enterprise architecture, etc.…)

• Strength of eco-system partners (e.g., relationships with innovation accelerators, technology vendors, academic institutions, etc...)

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Perminent Role

HIGH

SUMMARY Finding and engaging talent who can productively disrupt current thinking can be extremely effective and deliver significant business value to an organization.

As with everything in business it starts with having a strategy to find the right people, engage them in the right way and ensure that they have the support required to succeed. Organizations can get started by:

1. Establishing an innovation strategy with proper governance (if that hasn’t been done).

2. Assessing their readiness and identifying an appropriate disruptive talent engagement strategy.

Project or Interim Assignment Advisory Board

3. Using assessments during the hiring process to confirm that potential disruptors have the right competencies.

Idea Generation

4. Setting up formal mentoring programs.

LOW

ORGANIZATIONAL READYNESS

Organizations that are lower in commitment and readiness can still benefit from bringing in full time disruptors, there is just more risk involved, and they must be prepared to put much more energy and effort into making the investment a success.

Organizations that have high commitment and readiness, are well positioned to benefit significantly from disruptive talent, as long as they can source the right people and provide them with the right support.

LOW

HIGH ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

5. Engaging professional coaches to better ensure a smooth transition and long term success.

Note: A full version of this article is available from LHH Knightsbridge.

MAXIMIZING THE ENGAGEMENT AND SUCCESS OF DISRUPTIVE TALENT Once an organization finds the right disruptive talent, there is a lot of work that still needs to go in to ensuring a good return in the investment. For example, organizations should ensure that disruptor has:

EXECUTIVE SPONSOR

PROFESSIONAL COACH

PEER MENTOR

FREQUENT FEEDBACK

MANAGER SUPPORT

• Executive sponsorship • A peer mentor ‘informal’ aspects of the organization • Manager support to clear roadblocks • Connection to other disruptors –to avoid feelings of not fitting in/isolation • Frequent feedback – often gauged against different performance criteria • Professional coaching – especially early to ensure successful transition

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CONNECTION TO OTHER DISRUPTORS

Michelle Moore is the VP & National Practice Lead, Executive Career Solutions, at Lee Hecht Harrison Knightsbridge.

Michelle has over 20 years of experience working globally with (1) organizations to use human capital to solve complex business challenges, and (2) individuals to maximize personal effectiveness and career success.

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Flexible, family-friendly work policies are more popular than ever.

SO WHY ARE WE STILL SO STRESSED OUT?

By Brigid Schulte

LET’S BAN “IT’S A GOOD BUSY” Tara Oakman knows what it’s like to work in a high stress, adrenaline-fueled, always-on 21st century workplace. A few years back, she was up against tough deadlines, intense public scrutiny, and the pressure of creating a massive new federal program from scratch as director of a team overseeing implementation of some key elements of the Affordable Care Act. “It was totally crazy,” she said.

“Everyone was working all the time, 24/7. It made sense in a lot of ways— there was a lot of work to do—but our people were getting incredibly stressed out. We had a really high level of turnover and morale issues that were, in part, related to the fact that people were working like crazy.”

While Oakman understood the maniacal pace—her team was on a tight turnaround to bring healthcare to millions of Americans—she thought things would be different when she moved to a nonprofit. In 2013, Oakman began to work on programs to improve lifelong health, healthcare and well-being at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

She expected a more reasonable pace.

And for the most part, that’s what she got. Except that she found herself in yet another work culture where everyone still seemed to work. All. The. Time.

True, she and her coworkers are working to solve some of the most complicated problems of our time. Their job description is to make the world a better place—an undertaking that doesn’t lend itself to easily identifying VOLUME 16

when one is “done” for the day. In fact, many staffers come to work on Monday talking with relief about weekends filled with mowing lawns, planting gardens, organizing closets—all tasks that, unlike their day jobs, have a distinct ending.

Research has even found that people who work at nonprofits tend to put in longer hours–some call them “hero hours”—than others, with higher rates of burnout and turnover, possibly because they’re driven by a higher purpose. But it’s not like nonprofits are alone in the arms race toward constant overwork.

“Overwork is not new in this country,” said David Waldman, vice president for human resources at RWJF. ”But in some ways, it seems like it’s hitting critical mass.”

Oakman began to wonder why there is so much pressure to chronically overwork. Even ER docs, reporters in a war zone, or first responders to natural disasters work long hours, but only for short bursts of intensity. And she began to worry about what all those long work hours, stress and the struggle to juggle work and home responsibilities was doing to people’s health. She began to think that solving the interminable problem of work-life balance, rather than being an employee perk, could instead be central to her job.

Oakman was right to worry: Research has shown that long work hours are associated with increased risks for hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and depression. One longitudinal study found that men who don’t take vacations are 30 percent more likely

to have heart attacks. For women, that increased risk goes up to 50%. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and his colleagues found in a meta-analysis of 228 studies that work-life conflict is worse for one’s health than second-hand smoke, and that overwork increases the risk of death by 20%. Hardly environments conducive to improving lifelong health.

And so Oakman, Waldman, and others at RWJF decided to do something about it: to see if they could redesign their own workplace culture to improve work-life balance and health. And if they could, they could not only make their own lives better, but they could show others the way, and fulfill their mission to make the world better.

But they weren’t sure what, exactly, to do. Other organizations have turned to “wellness initiatives” like free on-site yoga and meditation classes or antismoking campaigns to try to change overwork culture and promote worklife balance. But the results are mixed: Some studies have found a 6-1 return on investment in improved health, others have found little to no immediate effect on what employers spend on health care.

And they don’t get at the heart of the problem: Why do people work so much?

THE PROBLEM ISN’T POLICIES— IT’S CULTURE Some companies have sought better work-life balance through experiments with flexible work, results only work

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environments, rotating on-call nights so everyone has predictable time off, or family supportive training for managers.

But RWJF already had a slew of such policies with work-life balance in mind at their Princeton, NJ headquarters: meeting-free Wednesday mornings, flexible work, generous paid vacation and sick time, and managers who make clear they don’t expect a response if they send emails on weekends.

“The policies aren’t really the problem,” Oakman said. “It’s the culture.

We decided we needed to figure out how people really operate, understand how they think, and see if we could nudge the culture.”

So the nonprofit decided to try something new: behavioral science.

Far from using traditional—and sometimes comically flawed—economic models that attempt to predict human behavior on based on what a “rational actor” would do, behavioral science recognizes that the way in which humans make decisions is complicated. There’s so much more than rationality at play: Behavioral scientists have found, for instance, that when we’re preoccupied with what we lack, whether it’s time, money or relationships, our mental bandwidth gets used up. We get stupider—one study found overtaxed

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bandwidth can cause one to lose 13 IQ points. And we tend to narrow our focus and “tunnel” on what’s most immediate, losing the capacity to make good decisions in the process. Good decisions such as what’s really the most important thing to focus on at work, or when to call it a day.

In the past, RWJF has supported projects that use behavioral science to nudge healthier choices to combat obesity—like color-coding healthy and not-so-healthy menu items in a hospital cafeteria, or having people post their workout sessions to a public forum. For this project, the first to use behavioral science to redesign work culture, they recruited other nonprofits willing to experiment, and engaged ideas42, a nonprofit firm founded by academics that seeks to use behavioral science to solve real-world problems. (Ideas42 is named, tongue-in-cheek, after the number 42, which was hailed as the answer to all questions about the meaning of life in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.)

Ideas42 has spent the last few months on the first two parts of their fourpart methodology: making site visits, interviewing workers and analyzing work hour data in an effort to define and diagnose the problem. They’ll move into designing interventions in the coming

months, and then, in the spring, are planning controlled trials to test those interventions to see if they work. The Better Life Lab at New America, where I serve as director, has partnered with ideas42 to follow the course of the project and report and write about the results.

ENDLESS MEETINGS, EMAIL FLOODS Defining the problem hasn’t been difficult and, for many readers, may feel painfully familiar: For many, there are work days of constant interruptions or back-to-back meetings. Then there’s the pressure of “asynchronous communication”—emails flooding in from everyone else not in those meetings. Workers reported racing through the day, only to see at 5 or 6 o’clock that they hadn’t gotten to any of the big projects they’d wanted tackled, so would often stay late or work late into the night–eating up time for themselves or their families–just to have time to concentrate.

Much like anthropologists studying tribes in the wild, ideas42 associates have been observing people at work at RWJF and the other pilot sites to get a better sense of the often unspoken social norms that shape behavior, said Josh Wright, executive director of ideas42. A

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workplace may say they value work-life balance, but if the boss is the first one in and last one out the door, that sets the tone for everyone down the line. Do coworkers take all their vacation? Do they excitedly ask where you’re going on yours, or sigh or give you snark for abandoning the team? Does the workplace have a “face time” culture that values physical presence in the office?

A recent study published in Harvard Business Review found that even though a company may have flexible work or teleworking policies to promote worklife balance, an unspoken norm of valuing face time can keep workers from feeling they can use them without penalty. The study quotes one worker’s explanation: There seems to be a norm that anyone hoping to move up in the management ranks needs to be here late at night and on the weekends. If you’re not willing to do that, you’re not going be seen as dedicated enough to get promoted.

Judging “good” workers by the amount of face time the put in in the office, Wright said, is “very appealing because the norm is very observable.

You can measure whether the person is at their desk or not.” Even though, he added, research has found that managers in such face time cultures can’t actually

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tell the difference between people who are working hard and people who appear to be working hard.

A strong face time social norm can actually lead to more work when one works flexibly or telecommutes, Wright explained. Workers who want to appear dedicated and committed end up creating a “virtual” face time culture, rather than better work-life balance. “The measurement becomes how quickly do you respond to email? How late in the evening are you responding to email?” he said. “So even though we’re giving people more flexible schedules, we’re actually creating the same face time/ responsiveness culture.”

THE POWER OF NUDGES The way to change that, according to Wright, is to reset social norms by designing very intentional policies and systems that are clearly communicated. If the work culture wants to communicate that giving workers time off to recharge is important, perhaps they could design a technological fix—a message that pops up on any email about to be sent after hours, asking if you really want to send it now, or whether you’d like to schedule to send it the following day.

To communicate that vacations are

really valued, Wright said, companies could perhaps design a more intentional system to nudge workers to plan ahead and block time off their calendars months in advance. Sometimes workers get so busy in their tunnels, they simply fail to plan far enough ahead, Wright said.

And by the time summer comes, the calendar is packed and it feels too late or too impossible to take a break. These are a handful of potential design solutions ideas42 managers and associates have been brainstorming in order to design interventions to test.

“The thing that can’t be missed in all of this is, when you don’t have work bleed over into your life, it will not only help people feel better about their lives, it will actually help them produce better stuff.”

That fact is not lost on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “The creativity of Tara and people like her we hire to tackle big problems is fundamental,” Waldman said. “Without it, we don’t have a chance. When you work too much or you’re too tired, you don’t need books of evidence to show that, every once in a while, you may get an insight, but it largely isn’t going to be good. We want our people to stay fresh and healthy and well balanced, because we’re in this for the long run.”

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FIND A WAY

By Diana Nyad

I heard from sports scientists, nutritionists, marine biologists, other marathon swimmers, other endurance athletes, plenty of fans. The whole world had now stamped this quest impossible. Our friend from South Africa, Dr. Tim Noakes, wrote me. (Bonnie learned from Tim to feed me real food, not so many compressed goos and gels, and we found tremendous improvement over nausea with my Handlers dropping handfuls of plain cooked pasta into my mouth.

There is surely a job waiting for me at Sea World.) Tim sent an empirical chart of the severity of glycogen deprivation, the difficulty of digesting in the supine position, all the factors that render the crossing nonviable.

Well, professionals and lay observers, core Teammates, close friends, and strangers can assess the long list of obstacles out there and deep them impossible to overcome, but they’re all forgetting the one key factor that surpasses all the rest.

That’s the power of the human spirit.

I drag out an old Teddy Roosevelt quote I used to have on my office wall. He basically addresses the spectator with disdain. He goads him to sit back in a comfortable chair and

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watch as the guy in the ring gets dirty and bloody and falls and fails over and over again. Roosevelt says he’d rather be the guy in the ring who “spends himself in a worthy cause.”

And the quote continues: “if he fails, at least {he} fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

When Bonnie hears me say I’m not fixated on making it anymore, that what it’s truly about now is not giving up, that the cause is that worthy to me, we have come full circle to the journey-versus-destination debate. This Swim was about my reawakening to a bold life, a calling to fill my days with acute passion, goals more noble than actually making it from Cuba to Florida. I refuse to take a place among timid souls.

I also tell Bonnie I am more a consummate professional than a fool. This is not blind ambition. I wouldn’t come at it a fifth time if I didn’t intend to bring more to it this time. There is more jellyfish protection to innovate. There is more knowledge of those swirling eddies to fully discover.

Nobody could criticize me for calling it quits after four valiant tries, but I weigh sitting at home wondering the

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rest of my life if I could in fact have brought new layers of expertise to the mission, as opposed to trying again, maybe not making it a fifth time, entirely at peace that I did bring better protocols to the effort. At peace that I didn’t give up.

I realize Bonnie and Candace have truly feared for my life out there. I know it doesn’t seem remotely likely that all of nature’s powers we’ve met up with will cooperate at once.

But I am convinced that the person gutsy enough to go out there five times has a much better chance of getting it all going her way than the ones who pack it up at the first defeat. I can see it. I can envision that other shore.

Bonnie falls silent. I know better than to push her. She promises to help me through training and asks me to leave the Cuba issue alone. The cause has been worthy to her so far, and I can only hope it will rise as such to her again in the coming months.

Right or wrong. I am not deterred. Perhaps I am stubborn to a fault. I just don’t pay much attention to parameters and restrictions and limiting definitions. My particular brand of “outsider” mentality started young. I remember observing my outlandishly dramatic father and my lovely but meek mother, at a very young age, and deciding that I was going to carve my own unique path, devise my own rules.

When Steve Jobs died, Bonnie and I watched the 60 Minutes episode dedicated to him. Somebody said, in effect, “Steve just didn’t think rules pertained to him. He saw himself operating under some other standards.” His colleagues were continually flabbergasted when Jobs would demand that certain programming or new design platforms be completed on some wildly unrealistic timetable, yet they seemed to somehow

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produce what he envisioned, on his irrational deadlines.

When Bonnie and I heard the bit about Jobs being oblivious to laws, she slowly turned toward me and stared. It’s true.

Starting with the rules laid down in my house when I was a child, I have never much respected society’s expected standards. A woman asked me after a speech during the Cuba prep how I could train at this level, with the normal aches and pains that come at my age. I answered, “Don’t put your assumptions of what one is supposed to feel at my age on my. I defy those suppositions of limitations. If you feel aches and pains, say so. But I don’t and I refuse to follow your or anybody else’s controlling and denigrating parameters of mediocrity.” Antiestablishment to the quick, and not always gently so, I admit – perhaps not even sensibly so. If I come to a red light at four a.m., have stopped and looked carefully in all directions, I can’t find the logic of sitting there for a couple of minutes, waiting for the light to turn green. I proceed. When some television executive tells me the story I’m working on has to have a linear structure and start at the beginning, I revolt and take my case to the highest command, arguing that to embark on this particular story in the middle and work the early part in later hits the sublime emotion of it. Ask Shakespeare about in medias res. And when people from right and left and everywhere in between declared Cuba impossible, I ignored them and turned to my own analysis and instincts for the answer that rang true for me.

In seeking medical counsel on my torn biceps tendon during heavy training in 2011, when I got news I couldn’t bear, I booked another doctor, to hear a different diagnosis. And I made it, my shoulder made it, in part because I refused to buy into these particular doctors’ definitions of limitations.

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TRANSBOARDING Traditionally, organizations have lapsed in their continual courting of employees who have already chosen to work with them. As leaders, we need to continually hire and then re-hire individuals.

Study the world of work and one finding will leap out at you.

It’s one of those revelations that is both surprising and obvious all at once. The discovery that the individual is in charge.

Organizations are strategizing how to find, attract and keep individuals. Successful leaders have mastered the art of finding and attracting top talent, but retaining and continuously engaging individuals is now the reality.

There has been a broad shift towards individual empowerment in the workforce. From first contact with a prospective employer, individuals have more power and higher expectations than ever before – employee retention has been replaced with a need for continuous attraction and rehiring, i.e. ongoing effort to engage employees and provide attractive career options for them. In fact, research shows that employees value career options almost as highly as compensation. This makes transboarding—the seamless transition from role to role within the same organization absolutely critical to organizational success.

Organizations need to continually create delightful and engaging experiences for the individuals who have already chosen and continue to choose to commit to the success of their company. Traditionally, organizations have lapsed in their continual courting of employees who have already chosen to work with them. As leaders, we need to continually hire and then re-hire individuals.

The recognized need for transboarding to encourage and support employees in the transition to new, more challenging roles or projects within a company is driven by the essential need to keep talent from leaving for a perceived better opportunity.

We need to go back to the basics and deliver at minimum the connectivity, communication and collaboration support needed for individuals to succeed. And those truly are the bare minimums.

People require and deserve far more in today’s environments.

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By Lisa Sterling Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer, Ceridian

Transboarding For Success­—It’s All About the Leader Embracing internal mobility and successfully navigating the transboarding experience involves a top-driven culture change for the entire organization. Leaders need to be visible and create opportunities for employees to engage with them. By connecting, communicating, and collaborating with employees, leaders are able to motivate employees to achieve more.

At Ceridian, we provide our leaders with the education, experience and exposure to help them manage and lead a diverse workforce.

We recognize each individual is unique and by personalizing their experiences, we’re able to mitigate the disengagement caused by ineffective transboarding and set our people up for success.

Challenging as it may be, we place an immediate focus on what individuals need to be successful in their new roles. Including:

• Building Relationships – Leaders connect individuals with the people that will be instrumental to their success

• Setting the Vision – Educate individuals on the future of their function’s success, what we are currently doing well and what success looks like

• Personalizing Communication – Discovering how each individual and each leader communicates and providing personalized coaching to help teams share who they are and how they work

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Today’s best organizations operate as a team of teams - autonomy is high and trust is a necessity.

The question becomes, how can you coordinate all this activity without creating significant overhead? In a word, culture. An organization’s culture is comprised of shared values and character. For us, these values are Diligence, Optimism, Agility, Transparency and Customer Focus. We have made significant investments to ensure our culture and values are communicated and understood throughout the organization.

For an employee going through the transboarding process, culture is an essential factor that informs both individual and team decisions. Shared culture helps employees navigate the ambiguity that comes with a new role, and provides common ground between teams. The work itself may be different, but the way we work is the same.

We are leaders in great and interesting, rapidly changing times. We need to adapt to the world of now and learn how to best empower individuals for success so they are committed to the ongoing success of our respective organizations. We need to empower our leaders to lead their people in the most effective way possible and we need to hold them accountable for their growth and development.

We live in a world where personalization is everything, from the way we order a Starbucks drink to the suggested purchases off our Amazon account. Our employee’s experiences should be no different. We need to architect unique and meaningful experiences to help ensure the continued success of our people and our organizations. After all, people don’t leave companies, they leave leaders.

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THE POWER OF GRATITUDE

By Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick

What is it about us humans that makes us so drawn to the negative? Every mistake we make seems to stick in our brains like Velcro, while our successes slide out like they’re on Teflon.

For decades, psychologists have studied the effect of the negative in our lives—trauma, addiction, stress, and so on. But there’s a relatively new school of study called Positive Psychology. Martin Seligman, PhD, brought it to light in 1998 when he was president of the American Psychological Association, but it originated with Maslow in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality. Today at Harvard, Positive Psychology 1504 is the school’s most popular class, and Penn offers an entire master’s degree on the subject.

It’s no wonder positivity is gaining in popularity: We humans can actually become healthier and happier if we teach ourselves to focus more on positive emotions such as forgiveness, compassion, altruism, and gratitude. Dr. Robert Emmons at UC Berkeley has found that people who are more grateful are happier, more outgoing, less lonely, and even have stronger immune systems and lower blood pressure.

We’ve now surveyed more than 850,000 people for our books, and we have found that managers who express sincere and frequent gratitude for their employees’ achievements have on average significantly lower employee turnover, higher customer satisfaction, and higher worker engagement levels.

In 2017, may we suggest a laser-like focus on the concept of gratitude as a key to a happier and more successful life. Below we offer 4 simple ways to get started in your team: VOLUME 16

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Do It Now Gratitude doesn’t age well. The closer recognition and appreciation follows a desired behavior, the more strongly that action is reinforced. If you want to inspire your team and show real appreciation, you will find the time. It doesn’t take long. The best managers we’ve studied spent on average about an hour a week recognizing their people, but the results were higher employee engagement, trust, and energy levels. After all, how much time do you need to pen a handwritten thank-you note, let the world know of someone’s accomplishment on their social media site, or say “thank you” in a specific way in a team meeting?

Do It Often Gratitude should be habitual to build a positive culture. In the best workplaces, people feel praised every seven days, according to research from the Gallup Organization. Gratitude never gets old if it is aligned with the core values of the organization or your team. Does anyone ever tire of their manager saying you matter and you add value?

Be Specific Everyone in a team must clearly understand what behaviour triggered your gratitude in order to repeat it. For the best impact, clearly link each recognition event to one of your core values that you wish to see repeated. Non-specific praise is actually disheartening for an employee, since it implies that their manager has no idea of the unique value they bring to the team. Many managers who offer this type of general gratitude may think they are rewarding the entire team with comments such as, “Thanks, everyone, for all your hard work,” or “You all make me proud.”

But such general gratitude has no effect, and has even been shown to have a negative impact on those in your charge.

While the research shows gratitude can help any business or team, our respective families are also trying an experiment to be more grateful in our lives overall in 2017. We each have family apps where we post daily the things for which we are grateful. These can be simple things like a good meal, an interesting conversation, or a tender mercy in nature such as a beautiful sunset.

Can 2017 be a year of gratitude in your team and your family? We would love to hear your stories of gratitude, and perhaps your plans.

Chester & Adrian

Be Sincere Reward only those behaviors you truly value, with your heartfelt and public gratitude. This is all too rare and can be extraordinarily meaningful. So gather people together. Your gratitude should be expressed publicly, your criticism in private. The team in attendance will learn as much or even more than the person being thanked.

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Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick are the New York Times bestselling authors of The Carrot Principle, All In and What Motivates Me. They are also co-founders of The Culture Works, an innovator in employee engagement and leadership training solutions.

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why leaders shouldn’t over-rely on BIG DATA

By Martin Lindstrom

Like it or not, businesses are drifting away from the consumer. Recently, as I jumped on-stage at a gathering of executives in New York City, I asked how many had spent time in a consumer’s home over the past year. Out of 3,000 executives in the audience, only two raised their hands. The unspoken reply could just as well have been: “Why should I? All I have to do is turn on my computer, and I’ll find never-ending streams of tables modeling how consumers feel about my brand.”

But isn’t this the same as describing the love of your life by the numbers? I’m sure you wouldn’t reply that you love your girlfriend because she’s 6 feet 7 tall, her hair color is Pantone 39134, and the last four digits of her cell phone number turn you on?

We’ve come to rely on BIG Data to understand the emotions of our most important asset—our customers—but cracks have begun to appear in the BIG Data varnish. Businesses are starting to realize that BIG Data has the potential to overlook some of the most important aspects of their customers’ desires and needs.

Not long ago, one of the major U.S. banking institutions misinterpreted an increase of “churn.”

This term refers to customers who begin to move their money around, refinance their mortgages, and show other signs that they may be on the verge of exiting the bank. As a consequence, the bank began preparing letters asking its customers to reconsider moving on.

Before mailing the letters, though, the bank executives discovered something surprising. Yes, indeed, BIG Data had uncovered evidence of churning, but BIG Data didn’t see into the bank’s customers’ lives, and so it couldn’t explain the cause. The churn wasn’t because customers were dissatisfied with the bank. The real reason? These customers were getting divorces, which explained why they were shifting around their assets.

The bank had relied on correlations generated

by BIG Data, but an essential piece of the puzzle was missing. They had missed the counterbalance to Big Data. They’d seen the correlations, but they’d overlooked causation. This is what I call Small Data.

In 2002, the LEGO company was close to bankruptcy. For years, the iconic toy company had been anxious about a decline in sales. The younger generation had simply moved on, preferring digital play to plastic blocks. LEGO’s young customers were leaving the LEGO universe far behind.

BIG Data had one lesson for LEGO: The instantgratification generation had arrived, and kids of the future would no longer make time for longwinded physical play. In 2003, as a consequence of the BIG Data learnings, LEGO made a dramatic move. They decided to change the size of their tiny LEGO bricks to gigantic building blocks. Where the construction of a LEGO castle in the past would have taken days, now the journey was reduced to hours, if not minutes.

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Surprisingly, the move had the exact opposite effect.

By Christmas 2003, LEGO was stunned to realize a $240 million operating loss on sales of $1 billion and was sitting on some $747million in debts, leaving the entire company in jeopardy.

It was then, in the nick of time, that a team from LEGO decided to visit consumers in their homes across Europe. While visiting a home in Germany, LEGO asked an 11-year-old boy what he was proudest of; he pointed out an old pair of raggedy, worndown sneakers that he kept displayed on a shelf.

He explained that the sneakers were proof that he was the best skater in town. The wear on the side of the sneaker demonstrated to his friends that he was capable of sliding down his skateboard at a perfect angle. The shoes had become his trophy.

The story was surprising, to say the least, as that seemingly insignificant consumer observation — this piece of Small Data, in contrast to the corporate researchers’ Big Data — clearly showed that if kids are placed in the driver’s seat, time is no longer the most essential element. Given the right motivation, they are still willing to devote hundreds of hours to perfecting a skateboard trick or building a fantastic castle. LEGO returned to their traditional tiny bricks and dramatically increased the number of bricks in each box. And, they laid the foundation for the LEGO movie. These helped infuse renewed passion into kids’ play patterns. LEGO quickly recovered, and today, 10 years later, LEGO is the largest toy manufacturer in the world.

I’m not an opponent of BIG Data. I am, however, a huge believer in achieving the right balance between correlation and causation. No matter how intelligent the analysts and data miners are, sitting in their airconditioned offices, the hypotheses they test against enormous masses of data points are still just that — abstract hypotheses.

In Small Data, however, now and forever, lies the clearest evidence of who we are and what we desire — even if, as those LEGO executives discovered more than a decade ago, it’s a pair of old Adidas sneakers with worn-down heels.

About Martin Lindstrom Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends is out now. Martin Lindstrom, author of seven books, is one of the world’s foremost branding experts. His previous books have been translated into 47 languages and sold well over one million copies. He was named one of TIME magazine’s100 most influential people in the world. In 2016, Thinkers50 named him one of the top 20 business thinkers in the world – and he has, for three consecutive years, ranked as the world’s #1 branding expert. He advises a veritable Who’s Who of Fortune 100 companies on branding.

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Use This Theatre Technique to Improve Your Next Meeting

By Cathy Salit

The IT guy thinks you don’t like him. The marketing director complains that the sales director doesn’t return her emails. Someone anonymously posts a snide note in the office kitchen about fridge etiquette.

Nobody likes workplace drama. It kills morale, divides the team, and ultimately drains time and profits. As many a manager knows too well, trying to brush it away or ignore it seldom works. And as many a theatre director knows, drama—interpersonal tensions, frustrations, ill will—can be harnessed and channeled into more productive uses. Here’s how to do it, starting with your next meeting.

WHAT’S BEHIND THE DRAMA Indeed, the desire to act out stories, improvise, and play characters and imitate others is as old as humanity itself—look no further than ancient Greece. Actually, look no further than your own childhood. For kids everywhere, play is improvisational, creative, and fundamentally performative. But for the most part, we stop playing when we grow up.

It’s our loss. Scholarly research and the popular press extol the benefits of play—for creativity, communication, team building, and simple stress relief, among other reasons.

Over the past couple of decades, business schools, leaders, and teams have begun tapping back into the power of performance in the workplace. It may sound juvenile or even like a distraction from “real” work, but the truth is that we can create positive drama to help counteract the negative kind that tends to build up in most work cultures.

We can free people to make new and better choices in how they work and interact. After all, companies are already used to reviewing their employees’ “performance.” So why not actually direct it?

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TRY THIS AT YOUR NEXT TEAM MEETING

1. There’s a director.

Are your meetings contentious, disagreement-filled, or derailed by personality conflicts? Or are they lacking in drama—boring, tedious, and not nearly as productive as they could be considering how long they run?

In either case, here’s a way to use drama to turn that meeting around and make it great (and yes, it will feel weird at first—most creativity in the workplace does at first): Tell your team that instead of just having the meeting you want to hold a performance of it. Start small—it’s just an experiment—with a quick, 15-minute meeting “scene,” with half the team “onstage” and half as an audience.

Then switch, and have the audience perform their own meeting scene. At first, you may not notice a huge difference— but that’s okay. These performances will look and sound a lot like your ordinary meetings, but with a few differences:

In a performance, the director (that’s you, by the way) runs the meeting like it’s a show or rehearsal for a show. It’s your job to call “action!,” “cut,” “take two,” and so on. When you encounter the usual array of personalities and communication styles—the talker who hijacks the meeting with lengthy digressions, the silent one who only speaks when spoken to, the “smartest person in the room,” the one who’s overly amenable to everything, the bureaucrat who enforces all the rules, the perpetually confused one, the time-sucking philosopher— you can do much more than simply be annoyed, frustrated, or complacent. Because it’s a performance, these are now “characters,” and as such you can direct their performances.

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2. The performance is visible.

The immediate effect of performing a meeting is that everyone becomes aware of their performance. The meeting is no longer simply happening, and team members aren’t just passively in it. Now they’re both in it and can see how it’s going, what you’re doing, and what others are doing. The experience takes on a kind of “meta” dimension that doesn’t do away with the usual drama, tensions, and irritations, but makes them simultaneously more apparent and less threatening.

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3. The performance is changeable.

And now, with the awareness that this is a performance, we can make different choices about how to perform. That includes not just what you’re saying, it’s how you’re saying it, how it’s being heard, and how others are responding as a result. You, as the director, can now help people try different performance choices in their character, their actions, and their dialogue.

4. It’s team-building, too.

And now, with the awareness that this is a performance, we can make different choices about how to perform. That includes not just what you’re saying, it’s how you’re saying it, how it’s being heard, and how others are responding as a result. You, as the director, can now help people try different performance choices in their character, their actions, and their dialogue.

GET OUT OF THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR Once the team has gotten the hang of this and you’ve performed/directed your way through a full meeting or two, mix it up a bit. Have each person take on the role or character that someone else has been playing.

That could simply mean swapping characters—the silent one plays the naysayer, and vice versa. Or it could be playing a character that you want in the meeting—like somebody who always supports other people’s ideas, or who’s genuinely curious and asks helpful questions.

Making your staff meeting (and other conversations at work) a performance can help defuse workplace drama and teach you and your colleagues to take a break from your usual, unacknowledged “characters” and “scripts.” It builds our awareness of our working selves as performers, of the team as a performing ensemble, and of the fact that we’re always performing to one degree or another, wherever we go.

Best of all, this simple technique can free us to create new performances—new versions of ourselves—anytime we want. That level of versatility, agility, and adaptability is something any manager would be grateful for, and it can’t be faked. It can, however, be performed.

Cathy Salit is CEO of Performance of a Lifetime, and the author of the recently published Performance Breakthrough: A Radical Approach to Success at Work.

TOP 4 LESSONS Sir Ken Robinson The Art of Leadership conference came to Toronto on October 21, 2016 featuring seven incredible thought leaders. Here are the key takeaways from Sir Ken Robinson’s talk.

1

Learning’s Natural but Mostly Cultural

Everyone is born with profound talents. Different and unique talents. Sir Ken Robinson says that Human Resources are a lot like natural resources – they are rich but are not always just lying at the surface – you have to dig for them. Human beings are naturally curious and capable of learning, but workplaces and institutions are unintentionally stifling this.

2

Find Your Passion

Seventy per cent of people in office jobs are uninterested and disengaged from what they’re doing. The key to finding engagement is first finding something you’re good at, but that you also actually enjoy. What you do can either feed your energy or take it away. If it’s something that you hate or administrate, you actually age quicker.

While this work will exhaust you, it also causes depression.

3

Don’t Be a Parasite in Your Environment

If we look at a plant, it adapts to its environment and it feeds its environment in return. Parasites, on the Internationally Acclaimed Expert on Creativity & Innovation and New York Times Bestselling Author other hand, destroy their environment. If we were to apply this thinking to our organizations, we have to adapt, support and sustain our environment in order to survive. Our environment also includes our employees.

4

Talent is So Often Overlooked

Sir Ken Robinson shares with us that Paul McCartney’s music teacher had half of the Beatles sitting in his class, and they were overlooked.

Kodak invented digital photography, but it was repressed by the culture of the organization. What are the hidden talents on your team?

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LEADERSHIP

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y a w e l p m i s y z a r c e h t fo r M a

er M m o t s u C Adopt a o t g n i t e rk

indset

By Ann Handley

Marketing personas? Check.

Customer data? Check.

Strategy? Check.

Deep understanding of your product or service and the problem it solves? Yep. Empathy for the customer? You’ve got that, too.

You’re armed with all of the above—all the things you need to create the kind of marketing campaign that blows last year’s results out of the water.

But there’s one more thing you’ll

need:

a strong writer Or, more specifically, you need a strong writer who can write with a customer-centric point of view.

That’s where it gets tricky. Because it’s easy to say that you need to adopt a customer mindset.

Every marketer knows that: It’s marketing 101.

But, in practice, it’s really, really, really hard.

We all like to think of ourselves as empathetic creatures. We all like to see ourselves as murmuring and nodding along with anything and everything our customers say, because we know them so well that we practically walk around in their shoes.

But the truth is that customer empathy is hard.

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It’s hard to look at things from another’s point of view, because our eyeballs are firmly rooted in our own heads, not someone else’s.

Hold up: a writer?

To start, go ahead and write your face off from a corporatecentric point of view. Write like you want to write, and say what you want to say. Let your own ego delight you because you are an amazing and hilarious writer! You’ve got this!

And then... drop your pencil. Put down the keyboard. Put some distance between you and that writing.

Let’s pause here for a station break.

I want to address a question that might still be nagging you after my declarative sentence a few paragraphs back: I said there’s one more thing you’ll need: a strong writer.

Why would I say you need a strong writer on your team?

Isn’t 2017 the year of video? Aren’t 360 video and live video the new frontiers? Isn’t writing as a marketing skill hopelessly old-school?

Nope. Embracing video doesn’t mean we ignore text and writing. Quite the opposite: Writing is the foundation of a good story. And well-chosen words can greatly enhance whatever video you’re creating, too, because many us view video in silent mode on social platforms, and subtitles— written words—help get your message across there.

Writ ing and stor y are the very heart of marketing— even in our video-centric world.

The perennial problem in marketing is that many of us are terrible writers on our first draft, often because we have the bad habit of saying what we need to say instead of what the customer needs to hear.

I get that. I understand how it happens. A deadline is looming, we are pressed to get something (anything!) off of our desks. And the next thing you know we’ve embraced what my friend Doug Kessler calls our own “inner yaddayadda merchants.” Ego takes over. And we allow our tonedeaf corporate-centric messaging to offend our precious customers.

Which is where empath

y comes in

So what’s this “crazy simple” way to adopt that empathetic customer mindset?

A lot of bad writing habits can be reformed in one key way: swapping places with your reader before you publish.

Take a break.

Go on a walk.

Have a coffee.

Binge-watch an entire season of Man in the High Castle.

(But, if you do that, don’t talk about it with me. I haven’t yet gotten past season 1.)

Go home for the night.

And when you come back to The Ugly First Draft (TUFD), swap places with your reader. Physically get up and walk to the other side of your desk and read it from there, if that helps. Put yourself not just in their shoes. Put on their pants, shirt, or dress. Heck, crawl inside their skin, too.

In short, adopt a critical mindset toward each sentence you read: “Does this truly help the reader in some way?”

Also, watch your language. In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote that a “scrupulous writer” will ask himself or herself a series of questions about everything he or she writes: “What am I trying to say?

“What words will express it?

“What image or idiom will make it clearer?

“Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

“Could I put it more shortly?

“Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?”

So, adopt that kind of critical view. And then rewrite as if you were the reader. Edit yourself.

To do so, you’ll need to do something with Ego: Shove it in the closet. Lock it up in the trunk of your car. Walk really fast and lose it in a crowded subway station. And, if it comes to it, punch Ego in the throat and give voice to the Reader.

And that’s the crazy-simple idea: Write like a marketer. Allow your Ego to showboat off a little. Then let the Reader come in to straighten out the mess you’ve created

7 Steps To Define Your Content Center Of Excellence By Mitch Joel “You’re that social media guy, right?”

I get that. The branding guy. The marketing guy. The tech guy. The media guy. The writer guy. The business book guy. The speaking guy. Depending on how people interface with me (and my content), my branding may vary. I may not love all of those titles, but it’s a great insight into both how the world sees me (thanks for that, Sally Hogshead) and how they connect with the work that I do. With that, when asked what I do, it’s easy to say that I “run a digital marketing agency called Mirum.” It’s easy to tell people that I am a writer, or a speaker on stage for The Art Of. For me, it can be situational, and I’m not all that fussy about it, because it’s all accurate. Many brands are focused on the one thing (and that can be important for an organization to find its differentiation). Of course, it is important to figure out the one thing that you do better than anyone else.

That one thing is actually created by figuring out how many things intersect.

Here’s my simple and fast process that I use to figure out what a true center of excellence is for content. Why do this? Focus. I want to ensure that whatever messaging that I produce, publish and promote ties back (as closely as possible) to my center of excellence.

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Use this quick 7-step methodology to build your own center of excellence: Step #1: The Tactic.

My tactic of primary output is content.

Yours might be advertising, word of mouth referrals, networking, database marketing, etc... You don’t have to stick with just one. Obviously, I deploy all tactics to grow the brand. Choosing a primary tactic gives focus. Content works for me, personally, because of my background in writing, journalism, media and communications.

Step #2: The Format.

My format is text and audio. You can choose just one. And, truthfully, my “one” would be text, but I do find myself producing more and more audio content. We live in a world where anyone can have an idea and share it in text, images, audio and video - and distribute it - for free - to the world.

This can be long-form, short-form, live/streaming or produced. This can be highly-produced or more off the cuff. My format of choice is long-form text (articles, business books, etc...) and long-form audio (a weekly podcast called, Six Pixels of Separation – The Mirum Podcast).

Step #3: The Frequency.

My frequency is daily for text and weekly for audio. I don’t recommend such a frenetic pace, but I do recommend setting up a regular schedule, and doing everything in your power to stick with it. This is often the most highlyoverlooked and mistreated part of the process. When brands fail at content, it’s usually because they have not figured out a groove and flow, and consumers don’t make the connection. Prior to the Internet, I was a much more voracious consumer of print magazines (had to be, there wasn’t the selection that we have today online). I would often go to the corner store, and I could “feel” when the latest issue of Fast Company was due. It just “felt” like it had been about four weeks since the last issue. I often get feedback when the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast is published later in the day on Sunday. My listeners know that it’s published early Sunday morning. When it’s not there, they feel the gap and this weakens the brand.

Frequency will not only keep you on schedule, it will be core to the brand experience.

Step #4: The Triangle of Attention.

Visualize (or, better yet, draw) a triangle.

For every point on the triangle choose one area of interest. My three areas of attention are: 1. Brands. 2. Consumers.

3. Technology. What does this mean? I will not produce, share or promote any content that doesn’t (in some way) speak to all (or some) of these areas of attention.

It can be only one area (even an idea that is loosely related to just one area), but the more points of the triangle that your content taps into, the more focused it will be. Choosing those three words is not as easy as it looks. If you’re not sure how to get started on this exercise, please get the book Accidental Genius by Mark Levy.

It’s about freewriting and list-making and it will help you generate ideas much faster. I promise you, within a few minutes of studying his simple process, you will be rock and rolling.

Step #5: The Bullseye.

My bullseye is “marketing.” Once you have your triangle defined (see step #4), now you have to figure out what the, exact intersection is of those attention points. For me, what pulls it all together is how does marketing affect, change and touch the areas of brands, consumers and technology. Again, this may read a simplistic, but it’s not. If, at the center, of my content there is not the notion of how this affects the product, price, promotion and place (those classic Four Ps of marketing), I probably won’t publish the content. The bullseye is what pulls everything together. For you and for me (as your consumer).

Step #6: : The Promoter.

How do you get your message to spread?

Thankfully, I’ve been able to build (over 15 years) a significant audience. With that, I’ve had the fortune of being a two-time published business book author, an indemand public speaker, I have a regular radio stint and write for several other publications (print and online). In short, I have many outlets and opportunities to promote my thinking. How will you get your message to catch on? What paid and organic media opportunities will you take advantage of? Many well-respected content producers tell me that they spend five hours of promoting their content for every hour of content that they produce.

“Build it and they will come,” is not a promotion strategy. This doesn’t have to be a broad list of opportunities. Be very specific and go after it.

Step #7: The Analysis And Adjustment Bureau

Use your analytics (most packages are free) to better understand what is working, where it’s working and how it is working. Think about how often you will use these tools, to not only better understand your audience, but to then adjust and tweak your content to make it connect in a more effective way.

Seven steps.

But that’s not all.

The idea here was to provide you with a very simplistic way to better understand your “why” (as Simon Sinek, would say) and how you are going to get your content to connect with the world, which is not as easy as it used to be.

By following this process, and doing the work (as Steven Pressfield would say), you will find your voice - a groove to the content flow - and better understand how to be unique in world where so many brands are just riding the coattails of others... and not gaining any significant market advantage by doing so.

Stick with it, because it takes time.

Focus on The Triangle of Attention and hit that bullseye.

Mitch Joel is President of Mirum – a global digital marketing agency operating in close to 20 countries.

His first book, Six Pixels of Separation, named after his successful blog and podcast is a business and marketing bestseller. His second book, CTRL ALT Delete, was named one of the best business books of 2013 by Amazon. Learn more at: www.mitchjoel.com.

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Three ways in which cognitive is transforming marketing

By Zeynep Tolon IBM Watson Customer Engagement (@IBMforMarketing, @zey)

By 2020, algorithms will positively alter the behavior of over 1 billion global workers.

This is one of Gartner’s top 10 strategic predictions for 2017 (http://ibm.biz/gartnertop10-aom) and beyond and by far the most striking one.

No doubt, this coming revolution in cognitive computing will affect all aspects of business but one area where it will revolutionize our interactions is in marketing and customer engagement. Customer expectations are at an all time high, customers expect organizations to know them and personalize each interaction based on where they are in their buying journey.

At the same time, marketers are gaining more and more visibility and responsibility in the organization. Forrester reports that 82% of CMOs report their goals are aligned to revenue targets and 1 in 3 CMOs hold responsibility for business unit P&L (up 13% from 2014) (Forrester – “The Evolved CMO in 2016).

So how can cognitive computing help marketers succeed in this age of evolving expectations? There are, no doubt, a multitude of ways in which cognitive technologies can help marketers. Cognitive can help you understand and analyze how interactions with your customers are breaking down or succeeding across multiple channels and screens, offer ways to derive insights from your data as well as external data such as weather and generate ways to interact naturally with customers. In fact, IDC predicts that by 2020, 50% of companies

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will use cognitive computing to automate marketing and sales interactions with their customers. (IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Chief Marketing Officer Advisory 2016 Predictions).

This article will showcase three specific examples in which marketers are starting to use cognitive technologies to delight their customers.

First of all, let’s define what we mean by cognitive. IBM Watson is a cognitive technology that can understand, reason, learn and interact in natural ways with humans. IBM Watson leverages data (including dark data such as pictures, video, emojis etc that is not easily accessible and makes up 80% of the data in the world), and partners with humans to influence, experiment and explore. There is a phrase that our head of development, Kareem Yusuf, uses in this video demo clip (http://ibm.biz/youtubewatson-aom) that I love: Watson is a “learned colleague” that can help you make better decisions faster and at scale. IBM Watson illuminate new possibilities for your business.

Let’s see then, examples from some of our clients who are using IBM Watson currently to innovate the way they are engaging their customers: On the e-commerce side, Staples brought their famous “Easy” button (http://ibm.biz/ easybutton-aom) to life with the help of IBM Watson. You can now press the Easy button on

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your desk and order something from the Staples store in real time. Even if you don’t have an Easy button, you can use the system from your mobile device, Slack channel or Facebook. You can sign up to learn more about the Staples Easy System and test it for yourself here: http://ibm.biz/ easysystem-aom In addition to simplifying some of the most common tasks associated with maintaining an office, bringing in cognitive capabilities to

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help your users in re-ordering and tracking shipments can help your business learn more about their business preferences and needs. Over time you can develop a closer relationship with your customers as you start to understand and anticipate their needs.

IBM Watson is helping companies transform how customers are interacting with their brand across all properties – online and offline. The North Face built this cognitive application with business partner Fluid and Watson analytics.

On the North Face’s site, you can interact by typing or speech with Watson. You answer a few questions about your travel plans and apparel needs to receive the appropriate personalized outwear recommendations. Contrast this with the multiple checkbox filtering process we have to endure on most shopping sites today. The pilot generated a 60% click through rate to the product recommendation. 1-800-Flowers also recently implemented this with GWYN – Gifts when you need them. Also Macy’s is working on a store assistant with Watson where you can ask a question on your phone in the Macy’s app that is store specific and the application will guide you.

One final example: ING Direct Australia (http://ibm.biz/ingdirau-aom) partnered with IBM to create a highly automated and personalized marketing process. Their goal was to enable real time personalization at scale. ING used IBM Interact real time offer engine to ingest many types of data and then apply performance results and predictive models to automatically learn and improve offer selection over time. With this solution ING DIRECT Australia created an automated system that executes more than 100 contextual triggers per day to share relevant, personalized messages to over one million customers each month.

If you are interested in trying out how cognitive could apply to marketing, here are a couple of ways you can get started: You can go to ibm.com/cognitive and try out specific APIs. For example, Personality Insights will take in your text or your twitter ID and based on the input, will analyze your personality across five dimensions. Or for a limited time, you can try cognitive as applied to content – Watson can analyze your images and content and tag them appropriately: http://ibm.biz/watsonhub-aom

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The Entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon:

Persistence

By Ryan Holiday

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For nearly a year with next to no luck, General Ulysses S. Grant tried to crack the defenses of Vicksburg, a city perched high on the cliffs of the Mississippi critical to the Confederacy’s stranglehold on the most important river in the United States. He tried attacking head-on. He tried to go around. He spent months digging a new canal that would change the course of the river. He blew the levees upstream and literally tried to float boats down into the city over flooded land.

None of this worked. All the while, the newspapers chattered. Months had gone by without progress. President Abraham Lincoln had sent a replacement, and the man was waiting in the wings.

But Grant refused to be rattled, refused to rush or cease working on this strategy. He knew there was a weak spot somewhere. He would find it or he would make one.

Today’s entrepreneurs and executives face leadership challenges quite different than those encountered during the Civil War. Investors might be chattering about removing a founder from a company’s board of directors. A rival might suddenly take away the competitive advantage of a new

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business. The going can be rough as Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen once said of startup life: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.” In an entrepreneurial environment where three out of four venture-backed startups fail, the solutions to business problems may not always be readily apparent.

Yet modern business leaders have a way to respond to these obstacles: indefatigable persistence, a quality that Ulysses S. Grant demonstrated in spades.

Grant’s next move ran contrary to most conventional military theory. He decided to run his boats past the gun batteries guarding the river -- a considerable risk, because once down, they could not easily reverse direction. Despite an unprecedented nighttime firefight, nearly all the boats made the run unharmed. A few days later, Grant crossed the river about 30 miles downstream at the appropriately named Hard Times, La. His plan was bold: Leaving most supplies behind, his troops lived off the land and made their way through the state, taking town after town, including Jackson, the capital, along the way. By the time Grant laid siege to Vicksburg, the message to his men and his enemies was clear: He would never give up. The defenses eventually cracked. Grant became unstoppable. His victory wasn’t pretty, but it was almost inexorable.

To overcome obstacles and make entrepreneurial dreams a reality, broadcast this message internally and externally: We will not be stopped by failure.

We will not be rushed or distracted by external noise.

We will chisel and peg away at the obstacle until it is gone. Resistance is futile.

At Vicksburg, Grant learned two things. First, persistence and pertinacity were incredible assets and probably his main ones as a leader. Second, in exhausting all other traditional options, he had been forced to try something new. That option -- cutting loose from his supply trains and living off the spoils

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of the land in hostile territory -- was a previously untested strategy that the North could now use to slowly deplete the South of its resources and will to fight.

With his persistence, Grant not only broke through; he discovered a totally new way -- the way that would eventually win the war.

Grant’s story is not the exception to the rule. It is the rule. This is how innovation works.

Many people think that great victories like Grant’s come from a flash of insight, that he cracked the problem with pure genius. But it was the slow pressure, repeated from many different angles, the elimination of so many other more promising options, that slowly and surely churned the solution to the top. The genius was unity of purpose, deafness to doubt and the desire to stay at it.

Indeed, researchers from Drexel and Northwestern universities have found that while an insight may seem to arrive suddenly, it may result from “the culmination of a series of brain states and processes operating at different time scales.” So persistent concentration and looking at an obstacle from every angle can lead someone to have an “aha!” moment as the solution is dug up from the brain.

Thomas Edison once said about the invention process, “the first step is an intuition -- and comes with a burst -- then difficulties arise.” But working through the subsequent dips can lead an entrepreneur to eventual success: A study from Harvard Business School discovered “performance persistence” in venture-backed startups; entrepreneurs who passed through the trials of startup life and thrived were more likely to succeed than those who had not.

So when encountering obstacles, picture Grant with a cigar clenched in his mouth with unceasing, cool persistence and the line from the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem about that other Ulysses: “to strive, to seek, to find.” Grant simply refused to give up, turning over in his mind option after option, and trying each one with equal enthusiasm knowing that eventually one would work.

When persistence finally leads out of entrepreneurial struggles to that one option that works, it’s possible to find within it, not only a measure of true strength but a breakthrough to new and better way of doing things.

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why it pays to be a copycat [everyone likes a copycat]

By Jonah Berger Who wouldn’t want to be a bit more influential?

Whether trying to nail that big interview, convince a client, or get the neighbor to finally trim their hedges, most people would love to be a bit more persuasive. So how do we do that?

Imagine you’re stuck in the throes of a tense housing negotiation. You’ve been searching for months and you finally found a place you like. It’s got a great yard, more than enough space, and a nice open layout that fits your life perfectly. The only challenge is the seller. They’re asking way more than you think the house is worth. You offered a number you thought was fair, they countered with a different amount, and even after a few rounds of back and forth, you’re still far from reaching a deal.

Trust is a key part of any negotiation. Sure, there are specific numbers each side is trying to reach, but rather than fighting over their slice, good negotiators know how to increase the size of the pie. Not just focusing on price, but finding other VOLUME 16

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Scientists studying successful negotiations found that a simple trick made negotiators five times more successful. Five times more likely to close the deal, even when all seemed lost.

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dimensions where value can be created. Maybe the seller could use an earlier closing date, or needs to get rid of their furniture because they’re moving out of the country. Getting the other side to trust you enough to reveal private information often enables a better outcome to be reached.

But trust is the last thing most people feel in a one-off negotiation. Each side is consumed with extracting the value from the other: how to give up the least information so they can keep the most value for themselves.

So how can people build trust more effectively? Win the other side over and get them to disclose information they might otherwise want to keep to themselves?

Scientists studying successful negotiations found that a simple trick made negotiators five times more successful. Five times more likely to close the deal, even when all seemed lost.

That trick? Mimicking one’s negotiating partner.

If one person rested their chin on their hand, the other did the same. If one person leaned back or forward on their chair, the other imitated that movement. Not blatantly, but discreetly enough that the other person wouldn’t notice.

This might seem silly. After all, why should someone rubbing their face or leaning back in their chair change whether people reach a deal?

But it did. People who mimicked their partner’s mannerisms were five times as likely to find a successful outcome.

And it’s not just negotiators. Imagine you’re out to lunch one sunny day with a couple of colleagues from work. You’re sitting outside a local restaurant, and after scanning the menu for a few minutes you know exactly what you’re going to get. The waiter asks you what you’d like, and the order rolls off your tongue: The Cobb Salad, extra chicken, with dressing on the side. Okay, he says, The Cobb Salad, extra chicken, with dressing on the side, correct? Yes, you reply, excitedly. You can already hear your stomach rumbling.

Notice what happened? Probably not.

Yet the same thing happens to each of us dozens of times a day. The waiter didn’t just take your order, he mimicked you. He could have just said ok or coming right up! But he didn’t. He repeated your order back to you, word-for-word, saying the exact thing you said.

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Seem trivial? Maybe. But research shows that this mimicry just increased the waiter’s tip by 70 percent.

Mimicry has all sorts of beneficial consequences. Daters whose linguistic styles better matched one another were three times more likely to want to see each other again.

Existing couples with similar linguistics styles were 50 percent more likely to still be dating three months later.

Such imitation also boosts professional success. In interviews, mimicry made interviewees feel more comfortable and perform better. In negotiations, mimicry not only helped people reach deals, it enabled negotiators to create value and claim more of that value for themselves. And in sales contexts, mimicry increased persuasion.

Mimicry facilitates social interactions because it generates rapport. Like a social glue, mimicry binds and bonds people together.

Part of this may be driven by the association between similarity and kinship. Just like finding out a work colleague grew up in the same small town thousands of miles away, when someone has the same accent, loves the same indie brand, or also says “ya’ll” instead of “you,” we feel an affinity or bond.

Consequently, when we imitate someone, or behave similarly, that person starts to infer that we have things in common or are part of the same tribe. Seeing someone speaking, or acting the same way can serve as a nonconscious signal that we are connected.

These connections, in turn, boost liking and smooth interaction. Rather than seeing someone as a competitor, or a stranger, mimicry makes people feel more interconnected. Closer and more interdependent. All without even realizing it.

Interviewing for a job, starting a tough negotiation, or just trying to turn a first date into a second one? Imitating the language, behavior, or facial expressions of others can increase success. Mimicry increases liking, trust, and affiliation. So don’t just listen; emulate. If an interviewer leans back on their chair and crosses their legs, do the same. If a client starts emails with “Hey” instead of “Dear,” adopt that language. Subtle shifts can deepen social bonds, turn strangers to friends, and make acquaintances into allies.

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Jonah Berger is a Professor at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and bestselling author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On. This essay is based on his new book Invisible Influence: The Hidden Factors that Shape Behavior

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Why Haters Are Your Most Important Customers By Jay Baer Negativity and complaints cost time, money and credibility. And as damaging as that can be, the rise of customer complaints can actually serve as a service multiplier.

One of the most overlooked benefits of hugging your haters is the potential to glean insights about your business. Paying attention to customer feedback can lead to valuable improvements to your operations and processes from insiders who are passionate about your product or service.

Very few people complain without a reason to do so Are you listening – really listening – to each of them?

It’s important to recognize that haters actually take time to let you know what they think, giving you an opportunity to take action that not only could potentially mollify them but also could fix the underlying cause of the problem, and eliminate complaints from the next batch of customers. Haters are the canaries in the coal mine. They are the early warning detection system for your business.

The “meh” in the middle will kill your business The real problem for your business is the people who have a poor experience but are not passionate enough about you and your company to take the time to say something about it in a form or fashion that you can find and act upon. They are the “meh” in the middle, and they are what kill businesses.

Renowned digital marketer, technology investor, and author of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, Gary Vaynerchuk has a blustery style that draws complaints from people who do not like his approach. But that’s the group to which he pays the most attention historically. “I’m a big fan of people who are publicly negative about you, because the ‘invisible negative’ crew is the thing I’m most scared about,” he says.

Don’t be afraid of complaints Dan Gingiss, formerly the head of social media customer service at Discover Financial Services, and now a leading digital marketer at Humana, concurs. “I would say don’t be 54

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afraid of complaints. The fact that your customer is taking time out of their day to give you feedback means that they care.

That should be appreciated. If somebody didn’t care, then they would not necessarily feel the need to complain. They just go to your competitor.”

I love the way Richard Binhammer looks at this dynamic.

Binhammer is a business consultant and adviser who helped lead Dell’s foray into social media customer service. He says, “Think about when you unfriend someone on Facebook. You don’t reach out to tell them, ‘Hey, screwball, I’m unfriending you because you’re an idiot.’ People just go and unfriend people. If they really care they’ll call you out and talk about it before they give up on you. Customer service is the last call before you lose them. So don’t assume just because they said they hate you that they actually hate you. They are telling you that they’re upset with you and they do still kind of love you, otherwise they wouldn’t be taking the time to ask for help.”

Complaints and haters are the mathematical minority Despite being sometimes painful to address, complaints and haters are very much the mathematical minority, increasing their value to your business. Indeed, the “meh” in the middle that doesn’t care enough to log a complaint is a much, much larger group of dissatisfied customers. This has always been the case.

John Goodman’s research at TARP on behalf of RAND began in the 1970s. In addition to discovering the customer advocacy impact of hugging your haters discussed above, he also found

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that 95 percent of disgruntled customers never complain to the entity responsible for their dissatisfaction.

Complainers provide a road map for increasing revenue That five percent of your unhappy customers who do care enough to complain give you a road map for how to fix whatever ails your business. Because while the people who take the time to complain are a small percentage of your overall customer base, the conditions of their dissatisfaction apply to all customers. In this way, the haters are the vocal representatives of everyone your company serves.

“Last summer, we had an instance where we were getting a lot of complaints about our lemonade. People were saying that it tasted different than the year before, and that it was tart and sour. We noticed these complaints, and went back to our chefs, and they actually realized that the recipe wasn’t being batched correctly in many locations. So they fixed it, and after that, we didn’t receive any more complaints,” recalls Erin Pepper, formerly head of marketing and guests relations for Le Pain Quotidien, a 200+ outlet restaurant chain.

It was the handful of haters who took the time to complain that enabled Erin to find the problem and fix it. This fix then benefited not just the haters themselves but the silent majority who didn’t like the lemonade but remained silent.

Complaints are valuable, free information When you’re able to analyze and act to improve your operations, complaints become massively valuable, free information that can

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be a catalyst for excellence, rather than something annoying that has to be “dealt with.” Instead of trying to reduce the number of complaints and eliminate haters, you should encourage complaints and make customer feedback mechanisms as plentiful and simple as possible.

The operations improvements that are bred in the petri dish of negativity also create other business benefits that impact the bottom line. This service multiplier effect can be massive in large companies that understand the relationship between complaints, insight gleaning, customer service, and subsequent customer experience tweaks.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the more than 25 years I have been a consultant and entrepreneur, it’s this:

Praise is massively overrated Every time someone tells you that you’re great at this or that, it feels terrific. But it almost never teaches you anything. Because you already know what you’re good at, don’t you? Praise is about ego, not improvement.

What makes you a better marketer, a better salesperson, a better executive, a better spouse, parent, or friend is negative feedback and criticism.

Good players try to minimize complaints. Great players try to maximize complaints, because they are the raw materials for getting better, and better, and better.

If you want to take yourself and your business to the next level of success, stop running away from complaints, and start running toward them.

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Finding the elusive decision maker.

By Jeffrey Gitomer Then what?

Jeffrey, I speak with many people in organizations that want you to think they are the decision maker when in fact they are not. I have wasted too many emails and follow up on people that can’t help. How do you ask without hurting the relationship you may have built? How do you determine the real decision maker?

– Steve

Finding the real decision maker may be one of the largest barriers to a sale in existence. It’s second to one other barrier: “Once I find the decision maker, what do I say?”

Finding the decision maker and speaking with that decision maker intelligently are not just critical, they’re also skills that can be career building or career ending.

I’m about to give you insight that will help you find and communicate with the all-important decider. But I caution you, it is not a be-all end-all.

Rather, it’s the beginning of your true understanding about decision makers, and decision making.

There are several parts to the decision-making process. Finding the decision maker is only one of them and it may be the smallest one.

Early in my career, I created a question that helped me find decision makers without ever asking anyone who the decision maker was. Whoever I was talking to, as I was making the sales presentation, I asked the question, “Who pulls the trigger?”

That was a direct question that didn’t 56

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insult the person I was talking to. If you ask, “Are you the decision-maker?” or worse, “Who is the decision-maker?” you both embarrass the prospect, and pressure them for an answer. To the person you’re talking to it gives the impression you’re sales hungry instead of customer friendly.

By asking, “Who pulls the trigger?” you don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. You’re merely asking for distant information.

Vital, but distant.

After I asked the “who pulls the trigger” question, I followed up with an equally powerful, but still pressure-less question. I simply asked, “How will the decision be made?” And whatever my prospective customer said, I followed up with yet another question about the decision-making process, “Then what?”

The words “then what” lead you through the decision-making process.

Especially if you continue to ask it. Then what? Then what? Then what? Until finally you come back to the trigger puller. It sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it?

Well, over the years I found that it wasn’t quite that easy. I had to have a greater understanding of the total

process especially what happened after the purchase was completed. In other words, what happens after ownership and what are the expected outcomes.

You may think what happens after ownership and expected outcomes have little or nothing to do with the decision maker. And you would be totally, completely incorrect.

After ownership comes value of purchase. Often erroneously referred to as ROI, it’s what happens after the customer takes possession, and what they’re hoping to achieve as a result of it. REALITY: That’s the only thing decision makers want to know. And once you know it, you’ll be able to find every decision maker. That’s pretty powerful.

There are additional questions you MUST ask during a sales meeting in order to find out the total purchasing and use of product or service situation.

Keep in mind, you’re going to be selling for about an hour, but they’re going to be using your product or service for years. Once you understand that, you understand the significance of obtaining that information.

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Here are the critical decision-making questions: • Who do you collaborate with?

• Who will be the main user of…?

HERE’S THE SECRET: Once you have the names of these people, you ask

the person you’re meeting with to introduce you. And

talk to these people about what really happens. Even if you’re meeting with the CEO, you can still ask for

• Who calls and asks for service?

meetings with his or her people.

• When a service person arrives, who do they meet with?

• How did the last purchase happen?

• Who will be responsible for the outcome of this purchase?

Once you have this information and meet the people involved…

Look at the insight you’ve gained.

Look at the understanding you have about their business process.

Look at the expertise you put into your experience base.

And even more important, you’re now charged with the responsibility of making certain every person involved in use and decision making are aware of your value.

“Jeffrey,” you say, “it’s a pretty complicated process. In fact, it changes my whole strategy of selling.”

That’s correct, your way was a fight to get to the decision maker. People lied to you, and people led you down a rosy path that completely wasted your time.

Oh, and you lost the order. My way is a little bit more difficult to learn and implement, but a heck of a lot more productive in terms of not just finding the decision maker, but actually making the sale – and gaining experience and expertise for the next sale.

Now you have to make a decision.

Decide to try it my way!

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of twelve best-selling books including The Sales Bible and The Little Red Book of Selling. His best-selling 21.5 Unbreakable Laws of Selling is now available as a book and an online course at www.gitomerVT.com.

For public event dates and information about training and seminars visit www. gitomer.com or email Jeffrey personally at salesman@gitomer.com.

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Pivot to a Customer-First Mindset

By Tiffani Bova Growth and Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce

What trends define the new era of selling? It wasn’t long ago that the sales process dominated the buyer’s journey – and customers felt they were at the mercy of what sales was willing to share with them along the way.

Today that is no longer the case. This changing customer climate is proving difficult for sales teams to acclimate to.

Today, sales reps must be proficient not only at selling products or services but also at understanding and anticipating customer needs. Otherwise, they will forfeit loyalty to competitors that do.

Salesforce Research surveyed over 3,100 sales professionals worldwide to understand the future of selling and discover how sales is pivoting to be smarter, faster, and more customer centric. While there are many data points covered in both the State of Sales and the State of the Connected Customer research, one that jumped out to me was the fact that 7 out of 10 consumers – and 82% of business buyers – agree that technology has

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made it easier to take their business elsewhere. The advancement of social, mobile, and cloud has resulted in many companies creating a low barrier of entry to entice prospective customers to their products and services via a frictionless sales experience. While the upside for companies should be fairly obvious, it also has downstream implications which companies must be aware of. Customers are not only voting with their wallet, they are voting with their loyalty. Minimal switching costs means companies must be more efficient at acquiring customers but they also need to be better at keeping them engaged and loyal over the lifetime of that customer. The State of Sales research showed that meeting customer expectations (See Figure 1) is the top overarching challenge to sales organizations’ processes — and when these expectations are not met, customers will purchase less, leave all together, or worse yet, share those poor experiences with their social networks.

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Figure 1: Ranked reasons why meeting customer expectations is a top challenge for sales teams

1 2 3

4 5 6

Customer needs have grown more sophisticated

Customer motivations have shifted from price to value

Customers have become more experienced with competitive, disciplined bidding

High-performing sales teams are aggressively innovating and pivoting toward the customer and are 2.8x more likely than underperformers to say their sales organizations have become much more focused on personalizing customer interactions. These teams are more successful because their entire company is aligned on how to empower sales to meet customer demands (See Figure

Customers expect the same level of service in every interaction (e.g. speaking with sales or customer service)

Customers expect sales to be available 24/7

Customers expect sales to be a trusted advisor (e.g. go beyond a sales rep role to be consultative to customers)

2). They understand the importance of arming reps with advanced and intelligent technologies. This approach empowers top teams to collect and understand customer data across departments, cut down on process time, deliver instant and proactive experiences, and create personalized interactions – ultimately resulting in higher revenue growth.

Figure 2: Percentage of sales professionals who say their company completely or mostly aligned on the following

How to empower sales to exceed goals

HIGH PERFORMERS MODERATE PERFORMERS UNDERPERFORMERS

Changing customer expectations

HIGH PERFORMERS MODERATE PERFORMERS UNDERPERFORMERS

Resources needed to engage customers

HIGH PERFORMERS MODERATE PERFORMERS UNDERPERFORMERS

Importance of cross-team collaboration (sales, marketing, service)

HIGH PERFORMERS MODERATE PERFORMERS UNDERPERFORMERS

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35%

41%

35%

40%

High performers vs. underperformers

55%

60%

59%

58%

87%

85%

84%

83%

2.4x

more likely to be completely or mostly aligned

2.1x

more likely to be completely or mostly aligned

2.4x

more likely to be completely or mostly aligned

2.1x

more likely to be completely or mostly aligned

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There is no shortage of skeptics of the new sales paradigm. They believe that while it may be changing other industries, or segments, it isn’t happening in theirs. Although the standard priorities such as customer

acquisition, enhancing training, and hiring more reps aren’t going away anytime soon, evolving objectives are beginning to reflect the pivot to a customer-first mindset. These newly elevated aspirations include increasing

retention through deeper relationships (51%), becoming trusted advisors to customers (39%), and providing customers with a more personalized experience (37%).

Figure 3: Sales teams shift priorities to the customer relationship Sales teams are becoming more customer focused – six out of the top eight objectives over the next 12–18 months are customer-centric.

Percentage of sales teams who rate the following as one of their most important sales objectives over the next 12-18 months

Grow number of leads / new customers

56%

Increase customer retention through deeper relationships

51%

Become a trusted advisor to customers (i.e., go beyond a sales rep to be consultative to customers)

39%

Provide customers with a more personalized experience

37%

Increase average order size (e.g. upsell / cross-sell)

36%

Increase face time with customers

35%

Improve customer and sales data quality / accuracy

33%

Improve use of sales technology

33%

Customer-related sales objectives

What has become evident is the fact that customer experience and revenuegenerating activities are no longer mutually exclusive. As these two areas become more intertwined, traditional 60

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Other sales objectives

metrics such as quota and pipeline generation alone don’t suffice as definitive success metrics. The quality of the customer experience is now key to setting sales teams apart from

the rest and therefore must become more embedded in sales planning for companies across all industries.

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Learn.

Connect.

Develop.

CPSA Membership Has Benefits.

The Canadian Professional Sales Association is Canada’s largest national sales organization. Established in 1874, the CPSA is your partner in building knowledge and skills to improve sales performance through our professional development programs, networking opportunities and exclusive member resources and benefits. Our over 20,000 members are found in almost every sector of the Canadian economy and cover a wide range of job functions, predominantly within commercial sales.

CALLING ALL SALES PROS – WE’RE HERE FOR YOU! Join us for networking events, breakfast sales talks and informative webinars. View the full schedule at cpsa.com/calendar.

To learn about our full program offering, including expert-led sales training and exclusive benefit programs, visit cpsa.com.

cpsa.com

1 888 267 2772

TOP 4 LESSONS Charles Duhigg The Art of Sales conference came to Toronto on December 7, 2016 featuring seven incredible thought leaders. Here are the key takeaways from Charles Duhigg’s talk.

1

Train yourself to think differently

Instead of trying to multitask all the time like everyone else, try establishing a contemplative routine. Thinking more deeply about your goals and priorities allows you to zone in and act more effectively. Challenge the mental models in your head and look for the alternatives.

2

Be situationally aware

If you can form a story that helps you with the situation at hand, you’ll be better off in the end.

When we have too much stimulus around us, we only look at the most obvious. It’s not necessary to react after every single prompt and alarm.

3

Innovation can be juxtaposition

4

Psychological safety motivates us.

Some of the best ideas have come from taking something familiar and mixing it with the unfamiliar. The best kind of creativity doesn’t come from sitting in a room waiting for an idea to appear.

Instead, it comes from the people who can figure out how to take existing ideas from one place and insert them into a new setting

There’s no surefire explanation as to why some teams are more successful than others. However, feeling secure in taking risks is a big factor in helping teams perform. When we feel like we’re in control of the environment, we act with more confidence and yield better results.

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Strong Foundations Des fondements solides Sustainable Futures pour un futur durable 69th National Annual Conference Institute of Public Administration of Canada

69e Congrès national annuel de l’Institut d’administration publique du Canada

August 20-23, 2017 Du 20 au 23 août 2017 Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

www.ipac.ca/2017

à Charlottetown (Île-du-Prince-Édouard)

www.iapc.ca/2017

7 TOP SALES SKILLS OF A SUCCESSFUL SALES TEAM

By Carrie Millen Director of Professional Development Canadian Professional Sales Association As a sales leader, making hiring decisions can be a very challenging, but necessary task. From being the right fit for your team, to having strong characteristics of a successful salesperson, there are many factors to consider.

While we tend to focus on the individual skills necessary to be successful within sales, the skills that make up a great team are equally as important.

The best sales teams are those made up of driven individuals who work together in order to accomplish great things. In order to help you make the right hiring decisions, we’ve outlined the top seven skills to look for to build a strong sales team.

1. SELF-MOTIVATING In a way, what you accomplish while working in sales is entirely up to the individual and the team at large. The number of calls a team is making in the course of a day, the quotas they are setting for themselves, all come down to how hard they are willing to work and how well they are able to push themselves towards bigger achievements.

The best sales teams are those that are driven and self-motivating, that take the initiative and push themselves further as a team.

2. CONFIDENT Sales reps aren’t just selling a product or a service when they’re on a sales call—they’re selling the 64

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pitch itself. If your team lacks confidence in their abilities, customers will notice and they won’t be encouraged to have faith in a product or a team that seems to have so little in themselves. Confidence is so important, and remains one of the top sales skills because of its ability to impact so much else.

3. PREPARED The most successful sales teams are diligent; they don’t go into a sales call blindly. Instead, they do meticulous research and plan ahead for the different directions in which the sales call might go. Every customer is

different; the one-size-fits-all script doesn’t exist.

For that reason, preparation should always be a priority —it’s one of the top sales skills sales teams need to have.

4. COLLABORATIVE One thing all successful sales teams have in common is a strong sense of cohesion as a group. While sales might traditionally be portrayed as a job that stresses individual accomplishments, the reality is that collaboration is one of the top sales skills that all high-functioning sales teams have. Collaborating with each other and with those in other departments can help teams as a whole develop their skills and increase their sales.

problem solving, and selling all rolled in to one.

Listening is one of those skills that is stressed again and again, but for good reason. Active listening is one of the most essential sales skills that a team can have if it is going to achieve great things.

Active listening means actually listening to what the customer needs and responding to those needs in a way that benefits both parties.

7. PERSISTENT

[Working in Sales] involves careful planning, prospecting,

5. ACTIVE LISTENERS

Every team is going to meet its fair share of obstacles.

Facing objections and failures can be really difficult, but it shouldn’t stop your team from moving forward. Persistence, in the face of challenges is imperative; one of the definitive top sales skills needed for a sales team to thrive.

Persistence is not just important in the face of adversity either; if every sales call immediately resulted in a sale the job would be a lot easier. The reality is that being persistent is the key to making sales all around.

6. MULTI-TASKING Working in sales is so much more complicated than just making a sales call and moving product. It involves careful planning, prospecting, problem solving, and selling all rolled in to one.

The inability to multi-task can be a huge hindrance to the sales team as a whole because it slows down the process for everyone. Where one person is not picking up the slack, someone else is having to put in extra work to make sure the whole team stays on track.

ABOUT THE CPSA: The Canadian Professional Sales Association is Canada’s largest national sales association. Established in 1874, the CPSA is your partner in building knowledge and skills to improve sales performance through our professional development programs, networking opportunities and exclusive member resources and beneďŹ ts. Our over 20,000 members are found in almost every sector of the Canadian economy and cover a wide range of job functions, predominantly within commercial sales.

Visit cpsa.com/articles to access our virtual resources centre, offering hundreds of articles, whitepapers and publications to answer everyday questions, assist in further personal and team development as well as tools to optimize sales effectiveness and acumen.

CPSA.COM | MemberServices@cpsa.com | 1 888 267 2772

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