Opinions can be like colons with free hemorrhoids

I have received some feedback that every person on the planet is tired of hearing how much more money we will send AIG. With that in mind, I will deviate in this week's post to elaborate on a best practice in success, sales, and ultimately life in general.

It's easy for anyone to give their opinion, it's harder to make a difference.

Let me illustrate with the following example.

It seems that the sport of fighting or Ultimate Championships has gained in popularity. If you have not seen these events, I strongly encourage attending at least one event for the pure entertainment value. They far exceed the violence and drama present in the current WWF soap opera. These UFC fights are a cross between boxing, martial arts, wrestling, and special dance moves I learned years ago while on holiday in Tijuana. Apparently “anything goes”, and you will frequently see vicious hits to the head and privates, including the dreaded “Death Nipple Tweaks” employed by some of the more vicious fighters.

It is not uncommon for fans to be whipped into an absolute frenzy, as they cheer on their favorite gladiators in this ring of death. The juxtaposition of these well trained athletes against the backdrop of many of the most out of shape people you might ever see outside of Sonny’s Bar-b-que at “All you can eat fat night” is interesting. The obesity levels present in one of these typical crowds would seem to indicate that Diabetes testing kits might sell well at the concessions next to the pork rinds.

Here you will hear the crowds screaming coaching from their seats. “You fight like a girl, or bite his nads!” Bear in mind that the coaching is normally coming from someone at least 125 pounds overweight, and someone who probably gets winded stepping in and out of the shower. That is probably the reason they choose to only shower once per week.

Their “coaching” is being provided to superbly conditioned athletes who have a body fat of less than 4%. They are cut, hard, and appear to be lethal killing machines.

Based on these facts, I have often hoped that a fight might be briefly interrupted to allow me the pleasure of watching one of the warriors physically extract a butterball fan from his seat, so the lump of lard could show them how it is done. I doubt that will ever occur though due the legal implications of such a move. Now perhaps, if there were warning signs at the events, and the UFC could avoid liability, they might allow occasional fan participation.

The warning sign could mimic the type of informative help that is found on your coffee cup from McDonalds. “This Coffee may be hot, so if you’re dumb enough to pour it on your testicles, please don’t sue us”. In the case of Ultimate Fighting, the signage might read, “Coaching from overweight people that smell of tobacco and/or cheap beer is not appreciated. It may result in said person being pummeled into a bloody pulp in the center ring for the pleasure of the other rednecks sitting around you”

***Special Addendum: If you are able to recover, please don’t sue us.

These are the things I think about. Everybody has a comment and an opinion, but it is whether they have credibility that matters.

There will always be people who always seem to have comments and advice even though they have never been where you want to go, and they have never accomplished what you want to accomplish. They seem to want to hold you back.

These are the people who want to pee on other people’s parades. While I will never understand the negativity, I am fairly certain it is somehow Freudian, and they may secretly want to sleep with their mother, or at least their Mother’s hot friend. Maybe they don’t have their own parade, or just don’t want you to accomplish or have something they might not achieve.

Learn from those who have been where you want to go, or at least heading in the same direction.

Leadership in Strengths- Mainly for those of you who work for large companies

In my years of work in executive coaching and training, I continually see examples of why organizations never achieve their full potential. (For purposes of this discussion, I will stick to focusing on people’s strengths, and not digress into an examination of the morons running many of our largest corporations)

Take the issue of accountability. Organizations all over the globe continue to focus on people’s weaknesses. Why is this? Evaluations are typically geared in that manner. What do the people need to improve? What areas do they really suck? What training do they need to address their absolute weakest areas?

It seems so counterintuitive doesn't it? Shouldn't we really be giving people more opportunity to grow and develop in the areas they are strongest? What about the areas they actually like, and maybe even love? Just too weird.

Instead of taking this approach, many organizations prefer to focus on an individual’s weakness, and insure compliance to all standards. My personal perspective, is I have never really cared if an employee stunk in one or two minor areas. I would rather inspire greatness in a few areas that really contribute to the production of the team.

You even see this errant approach in areas such as “career development” for people who show above average potential. Many functional leaders still insist upon “rotating” these individuals into other assignments whether or not the employee has any interest in the new position. The flawed logic is that they will be better employees with a broader exposure to different functional units. While that may be true, if you are looking to develop the next CEO, unfortunately that doesn’t apply to the vast majority (read pretty much all) of these ridiculous moves.

We take talented and aggressive sales managers and people, and move
them into areas where they have no contact with customer, but can better understand “processes”. We move brilliant finance and accounting professionals into management positions even though they may have little people skills, and even less skill in leadership. We move great operators, and project team leads, into marketing management positions leads because we need to “round them out!”

What we do is create generalists, who will never be as good or valuable for your organization as they could have been if you let them grow in areas they have both skill and passion.

I sense I am rambling, so I will attempt to explain with a sports analogy.

Don Butkis is the Corporate HR Manager for Big Company, Inc. Don believes that all management candidates must have multiple rotations and experiences prior to being promoted into any functional discipline. Even once promoted into a separate discipline, Don still believes that you should continue to rotate people, so they don’t get “complacent” in their assignments. Don even gets nervous if someone shows strong interest or even “talent” in a position; because he fears they might like what they’re doing too much. Or even worse, they might become too talented in an area, and then leave Big company Inc. to start their own business. They might even work for the competition! Don can’t let that happen, so if he keeps everyone average, and constantly trying to learn new assignments, and working on weaknesses, that will not be a risk.

Now, let’s assume that Don becomes the manager of a professional baseball team that finally has a pretty stable roster. In the process of Don evaluating the team, he decides that rotations need to be made so that the players can better understand each other’s roles.

He moved his all star catcher to the outfield. His Golden Glove first baseman was moved to start catching. He started working with his top pitchers on their hitting, as their batting averages were terrible, and this was an obvious area of weakness.


I know this may be a shocker to all of you, but the team started performing much worse in the following months.
If this was a real story in professional baseball, the manager would be fired immediately, if not roasted on a grill by the fans.

In the corporate world, it is happening every day. But instead of firing the managers, or applicable leaders, the approach is very different. The managers continue to focus on weaknesses at the employee level, and the fans (shareholders) may not necessarily be holding the leadership up to the same standard of putting a winning team on the field.

The best coaches and leaders focus on the strengths of their team. They find what their people on their team do the very best, or where they have strength and passion. They then give them the opportunity to expand and grow in that role. They then look to plug weaknesses with the right people and fit. They find the best player! It is not about a rotation, or filling a hole, it is about aligning the right person with the right opportunity. That is one of the areas areas that will have maximum impact for any organization.

Believe it or not, the people will also be happier, and more driven to succeed.

Yur leadership may be smoking Crack!

I get many emails regarding “Dilbert like” moments in Sales execution.
This week’s submission came from an Account executive who was beyond tired and fed up with his sales leadership’s lack of focus on what really mattered.

He shared with me that a special conference call was scheduled (during the sales day), to review some areas the needed critical attention.

The main area of focus was on something called “success story reporting”. They introduced a new report called the “Success story compliance report”.

Apparently, this organization, in all of their infinite wisdom, had created a special report (and actually used man hours to create it) that detailed which areas down to the AE detail were submitting success stories. It would be one thing if these successes, shared best practices, or help for other sales people, but they don’t. They same useless phrases are cut and paste to satisfy someone’s insatiable appetite for activity…

Never mind the fact that this organization had CRM systems that already captured the same detail, including sales funnel movement, it seemed to be a critical business priority that a separate report be created for the Neanderthals that actually run the sales organizations, and can’t use the systems already in place. Somehow they think nothing of the hours (multiplied exponentially by your number of resources) that go into these non-value added endeavors!

My tip in this area is direct.

Does anyone actually read or do anything with the information you are being requested to provide? Here’s a shocker question- How does this report actually help you reach your goals, or even the organization?

If that question cannot easily be answered, then the report should be eliminated. Fight and rage against the machine. Life if to short…Just do it! Stop sending it out immediately, and recognize that at a minimum you have just saved your people some time.

Driving improved results in anything including sales is about relentless focus on those activities that help us achieve our goals. An additional benefit to eliminating unnecessary reporting will also be improved morale, as well as overall productivity.

While probably a discussion for a different time, overall productivity and its measurement should always be centered on the activities in the most important areas.

Measurement loses impact when it is applied to everything.

The people that are most effective are those that spend more of their time and effort in the areas that yield the highest results.