Zugunruhe: Helping great people get [good] things done: Zoog.un.roo.ee

This We Believe

Perhaps you’re familiar with the NPR series, This I Believe. As I am planning revisions to my website, I’ve been thinking about the founding principles of Zugunruhe as a company. As part of the process, I thought I’d share some of the statements I came up with to describe what I believe and how Zugunruhe is operated.

We believe in continuous, life-long learning and improvement.

Zugunruhe was founded to serve people who want to grow. Grow intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. People who want to grow businesses and non-profits, companies and careers, children and gardens, joy and works of lasting significance. We serve people who are not satisfied with the status quo but instead want to move forward to make their lives, and the world, a better place to be.

Personally, I believe in life-long learning, not just for knowledge’s sake alone, but also for the benefits it brings. Everyday, I work to learn something new. I started this as a child when I caught on to the joy of telling my dad what I’d found out and seeing his pleasure in learning something from me. Not only does learning allow the learner to teach and entertain others but continuous learning is good for your brain. The more those connections are used and strengthened, the more likely it is that you’ll have a good memory for a lifetime. But that’s not all.

I believe in continuous learning. Practically every time I learn something new, I am called upon to transmit that information to the individuals and organizations Zugunruhe serves. A few days ago, I started to listen to a podcast on sales. The subject was closing sales and I thought, “I don’t really need this right now.” Sure enough, that afternoon a coaching client needed some advice on closing and I learned an important lesson. I may not need the information but somebody else will. It’s up to me to soak all that knowledge up continuously to be prepared when the need arises. (That’s why I followed the inclination to update my CPR certification last week; you never know!)

Finally, I believe in improvement. Always. Anything that can be done well can be done better. That’s why I’m always looking for ways to improve my performance as a coach, writer, educator, daughter, wife, dog-owner, you name it. Not because I seek perfection--that’s unattainable. But because I have a strong sense of untapped potential and promise within. It’s my mission in life to manifest potential and promise--yours as well my own.

Thus, it is Zugunruhe’s commitment that we will never rest on our laurels; we will always seek continuous, life-long learning and improvement. Because that’s what we believe in.

Following shiny objects

Sometimes it’s difficult to keep your mind on what you’re supposed to be working on. Apparently this is a problem for lots of folks. For example, it’s been widely reported that NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, sent a memo that cheerleaders were not to do their warm ups too close to the visiting teams. It seems that some of the players were paying too much attention to the women and not enough attention to their coaches.

Of course, most of you don’t have to worry about scantily-clad women dancing around and pulling your attention away from what you’re supposed to be working on. (And I’m sure some of you are deeply disappointed, too!) But dealing with other, more mundane distractions is an everyday struggle. People get very, very hooked into their email, checking the news, wandering around YouTube, and visiting Facebook. I often hear clients bemoan how much time they’ve wasted. I struggle with the some of the same shiny objects. So how can you learn to ignore them for a little while?

Here are three simple ways you can start to get control and be less distractible.

Do what’s important first--this could change your life. Seriously. Plan your day. If possible, do your planning at the end of each day so when you come in, you’ll already know what you want to get done. Try writing down five important things to do. Make these five things your number one priorities. Be ruthless, be selfish. Get ready to be amazed.

Turn off your email notification. I know how hard it is not to check email. When you’re the least bit restless, checking email feels like you’re doing something. But most of the time, you’re not. If you find that you simply can’t stay away, put yourself on a timer and check email at reasonable intervals (like every 30 minutes instead of every 30 seconds).

Stop reading/listening to the news. No kidding. I did this years ago, having decided that if something really important happened, someone would tell me. It works and I’m happier and more relaxed than I used to be. At the very least, limit yourself to once a day--in the afternoon or evening. Save your mornings for the important stuff (see number one, above).

In the end, the most valuable thing you can do for yourself may be to ask, what is your distraction costing you? If you’re not getting to the really important stuff, and that’s not ok, then step up, put some blinders on, and get serious. I promise that you’ll take your game to the next level. And that’s something to cheer about.

Business blog: Time for a Facelift?

I was talking to one of my clients about starting a blog for his business. We talked about all the usual things that people think of when they talk about writing a blog: what software to use, how often to post, what he might write about. Then he said something that got my attention: “I’ve never really seen a good business blog.” Ouch.

Maybe this client has never read my blog. Or worse, maybe he has. But his comment got me to thinking. What does a good business blog look like? And does mine need a facelift?

To begin to answer these important questions, I cruised over to Brian Brown’s blog: Pajama Market--Small Business Blog of the Day. Brian’s been checking out lots of business blogs. He has a distinctly warm style, that Brian does, and knows his subject really, really well. Brian defines two sorts of business blogs: industry versus business-specific. An “industry” blog is what I’ve been writing. My posts focus on things I’m interested and often revolve around a theme I’m grappling with. For example, when you see lots of posts on David Allen’s Getting Things Done, you can pretty much bet that’s what I’m working on in my own day to day.  A business-specific blog is geared more around the business itself. (To see a really superb example of a business-specific blog, check out Rich Brook’s Flyte Blog.)

So dear reader, what do you think I ought to do? Stay industry or go business-specific? What needs changing? What should stay the same? You are the one that comes back and reads what I write, God bless your soul! Tell me what it is you’d like to see. Change is in the air, y’all. Speak up!

Where are you headed?

Any road is bound to lead somewhere if  you follow it long enough.--Patricia Wentworth

Ever ended up somewhere you didn’t intend to go? Perhaps you took a wrong turn by accident. Or maybe you just got curious about where a particular path led. Sometimes, folks end up in places simply because they weren’t paying attention--like missing an exit on the highway due to preoccupation or talking on the cell phone.

Right now, today, you’re on the road. You’re taking actions, making plans, doing things. Every road leads somewhere. Some are dead ends. Others go to bad neighborhoods. It’s easy to get caught up in the journey. Put your head down and plod along. Every once in a while, though, it’s useful to take a look around and ask yourself, where does this road lead? Will it get you to where you want to end up?

Let’s say that your goal is a glorious retirement. Take a look at the road you’re on. Does it include debt reduction? Savings? Investments? Are you taking good care of yourself so that you’ll have a healthy body? Managing important relationships to have someone to share your time with?

Everyone has dreams. The only way to make your dreams into reality is to be fully mindful of doing the right things, taking the right steps on the right road. It does little good to be blindly climbing the corporate ladder only to discover you’re on the wrong ladder or that the ladder you’re on is leaning against the wrong wall.

One of the first steps to attaining the life of your dreams is to figure out what road you’re on and making sure it’s the right road. You’re going somewhere, you might as well end up somewhere you’d like to be.

Get a Dream Manager

I just finished reading Matthew Kelly’s book, The Dream Manager, for the first time. I say first time because I intend to turn around and read it again.

Kelly’s book is based on the idea that they way to turn around workplace apathy, high turnover, and disengagement is to invest in the dreams of the workforce. Here, invest means “engage with in a meaningful way,” not “throw money at.” Written as a fictional story, Dream Manager chronicles the woes and wins of a janitorial company. The moral of the story is very simple: treat every employee like a unique, valuable human being who matters.

The book highlights the importance of having a “dream manager,” someone to come along side and assist people in articulating, planning, and executing their way to a meaningful outcome. Here’s how Kelly puts it:

“Everyone needs a Dream Manager. To a certain extent, we can do it for ourselves. But we all need someone who can help us articulate our dreams, determine the priority of those dreams, pull together a plan for the fulfillment of those dreams, and hold us accountable on a regular basis for the actions that help us achieve our dreams or hold us back…”

The dreams Kelly talks about aren’t on the par with ‘save the world.’ No, these are real, down to earth attainable by anyone dreams like home ownership and overcoming credit card debt, and having meaningful friendships. The Dream Manager in this book was an employee of the fictitious company whose job it was to help employees realize their dreams.

Kelly rightly addresses the resistance that companies have to making this kind of investment in their employees. And the most common objection is cost. The question that Kelly asks is not ‘how much will having a dream manager cost us?’ The question is really, “What is it costing you not to do this?” If the numbers he quotes are correct, turnover costs companies 150 percent of the employee’s base salary. Not only that but according to Kelly, 85% of employees have no meaningful understanding of how they contribute to their companies mission. Employees are disengaged and highly mobile. What Kelly argues is that when a company demonstrates (really demonstrates, not pretends to demonstrate) a caring relationship with employees then the company is rewarded by better work performance, greater loyalty, fewer sick days, and enhanced recruiting.

“Dreams are the currency of the future,” Kelly says. I think he’s right. In conversation after conversation, I hear people who are longing to connect their daily lives with their greatest aspirations. I’m really lucky, I’ve not only had a Dream Manager but I am a Dream Manager. That’s the great joy of what I do, I help people make that critical connection and then execute.

Your dreams are important. They are worth investing in. Start today by buying this book, then turn around and ask the important people in your life, “What’s your dream?” I’m betting the answers will surprise you.

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• Follow up on Gary Klein and decision making. Klein is the guest blogger at Cognitive Edge during the month of September 2007.
• Zugunruhe was discovered by and featured in the MIT Press blog recently. Thanks!

Alex the Parrot Dies

Sad news from the world of science today: Alex, the African Grey parrot who made headlines with his ability to learn all sorts of information and use it constructively, died. For a parrot, he was rather young: only 31 years old. He died of apparently natural causes.

I had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Irene Pepperberg, the research scientist who trained and studied Alex, many years ago. Pepperberg is a petite, very attractive lady with a ready smile. She told me about the fun and frustration of her work. For one thing, her colleagues (some of them, anyway) found her results so out of line with their own perception of animals that they accused her of all sorts of things. One even asked, apparently in all seriousness, if she had ruled out ESP.

The truth of the matter is that animals have greater cognitive and emotional abilities than people may want to believe. Perhaps the resistance comes from the fact that we humans visit all sorts of suffering on other creatures. To imagine that those same creatures have emotions and think, in some manner, the way we do would put ethical treatment of animals into a whole different realm. Or so I imagine.

In any event, what Pepperberg and Alex demonstrated is that animals have cognitive abilities that allow them to process information in ways similar to our own. The difference between us and them is how we communicate what we know. Parrots can learn to speak the same language as the humans around them do, and African Greys are particularly gifted in that respect. So when Pepperberg taught Alex to speak English, she did so with the purpose of learning about how he used his mind to think. He could add and subtract, understood the concept of zero, identify shapes and colors. He understood concepts like less and more. He used language appropriately.

There is a famous story that Alex learned how to say ‘I love you,’ and used the phrase with several people but not Pepperberg herself. Pepperberg was leaving Alex at the vet’s office on one occasion and Alex called out to her “Wait! I love you!” It was the first time he’d ever said ‘I love you’ to her; she said it almost broke her heart. Reportedly on the last evening of his life, Alex said to Pepperberg, “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”  We should all be so lucky to be told goodbye in such a way by someone we’ve worked with and loved for thirty years.

Bye-bye Alex. We’ll miss you.

Speak Up!

Front of the room speaking is one of the most powerful means of influence available to you. If you’re in sales or marketing of any kind, standing in front of a group gives you an instant advantage and a room full of leads. Not only that, but you’re in a position of being an authority, and expert, and if you play your cards right, you can come away with appointments or even close some sales.

The problem with front of the room speaking is that people are rarely trained to do it. You’ve probably seen more than your fair share of really bad talks. I know I have. In a recent article for Knowledge@Wharton, public speaking coach Richard Greene gave several keys to speaking success. Here’s my executive summary (click here for the full article).

Connect. You are not in front of the room solely to give information. You could do that by email. You are standing in front of people to make a connection with them. Look people in the eye. Slow down. Get out from behind the podium. Talk to individuals, not the crowd.

Be real. Authenticity speaks louder than words. Likewise, being a fake will drown out your message completely.

Slow down. Most people speak too rapidly. When you have an important point to make, pause before you make it. That pause signals to your listener that something is about to happen. Greene says, “…the difference between a good speaker and a great speaker is the pause.”

It’s not about you. The audience members are listening to you because of something they want. Remember that. You are not there to look good or sound smart. You are there to serve the listener. So practice until you’re smooth and then forget yourself and be there for them.

Real Hero

Tommy Foust didn't think, he just acted. Yesterday, Foust, a 17 year old life guard and high school senior, pulled a woman from her car seconds before it was hit by not one but two trains in rapid succession. I suspect that like many emergency personnel, Foust wasn't aware of making decisions. He simply did what his training taught him to do. He saved a life.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the kind of decision making that Foust used when he leapt into action. You can read it here.

 

Kudos to David Armano at Logic + Emotion for his eye witness account.

Inexhaustible Supply

“…knowledge alone is not power; [knowledge] becomes powerful only when it is applied through positive action.”---Napoleon Hill

You’ve probably heard that old saying: It’s not who you know but who knows you. Well, something similar is true of what you know. It’s not what you know, it’s who knows what you know. And the only way that people will know what you know is if you do something with your knowledge.

Father Michael Fones, of the Siena Institute, talks about knowledge as part of the Called and Gifted work he does. He says that knowledge, as a spiritual gift, is always given along with another gift like teaching or writing. Knowledge is of little use when it is simply gathered and hoarded. Instead, Father Michael says, knowledge is given to someone so that it can be shared with others.

There are many people who can benefit from what you know. You can share your gift of knowledge by volunteering your expertise, coaching a Little League team, or helping out a friend. Your knowledge may allow you to act to help a stranger or act as someone’s angel. You never know what opportunities may come along to allow you to give your knowledge away.

The best part of sharing your knowledge is that your store never runs empty, the supply never gets used up. You lose nothing and gain much.

"The world pins no medals on you because of what you know, but it may crown you with glory and riches for what you do."--Napoleon Hill

Getting off the Runway: it's the only way to fly

“Priorities are determined from the top-down--i.e., your purpose and values will drive your vision of the purpose being fulfilled, which will create goals and objectives, which will frame areas of focus and responsibility.”--David Allen

One thing I hear in conversation after conversation with my clients is their longing to live a life in accordance with purpose and vision. People long for lives of meaning, they really do. Lives that have impact and significance, doing things that have positive effects on others. But how many of us actually let our purpose and vision drive what we do on a daily basis?

I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time on what David Allen calls the “runway,” the factory floor where the stuff actually gets done. Some days, there are lots of fires to put out. Other days--yesterday was one--my ability to focus was nil and distraction was at an all time high; I couldn’t stay on task to save my life. It’s not that I don’t know what’s important to me or that I lack a sense of vision. It’s that my priorities sometimes get driven from the bottom up. Whatever is most urgent or easiest gets done.

A while back I read a wonderful book by Steven Pressfield called The War of Art. Pressfield describes the struggle against Resistance--that force that opposes the completion of all great works from novels to the war on poverty and everything in between, mundane or divine. He points out that Resistance only acts when we attempt lofty goals: “[Resistance] kicks in when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, or spiritually.” What this means is that when you attempt to order your priorities from the top down, you’re going to meet with significant amounts of friction. Staying on the runway all the time is easy; getting sufficient speed to get off the ground…now that takes effort.

The other day, I was out hiking with my dog. It was one of those summer days that remind me of why I live in Oregon: warm, low humidity, views of the Cascades to the east, tons of delicious ripe blackberries everywhere. I went hiking because I needed to get away from my desk and do some higher level thinking. I’d been contemplating some the areas of focus and responsibility in my life. What I really wanted to was to get some clarity on my goals for the next year or two. Frankly, as I was hiking, I was feeling a bit selfish. What  right, I asked myself, do I have to take off and go hiking just because I need to think? That’s when it hit me. That kind of thinking couldn’t happen in my office. There were too many things calling for my attention there. I had to get off of the runway. Literally.

I’ve written before that priorities are what you do. Regardless of what you say or think about what’s important to you, if you’re not doing it, it’s not a priority for you. If you are not satisfied with your job, your relationships, or any aspect of your life, you may be spending too much time on the runway, letting the tail wag the dog, so to speak.

You have gifts and strengths, talents and abilities, a unique role that the world is waiting for you--and only you--to use for some great purpose. The only way you will get to manifest that calling is to order your priorities from the top down.

“We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”--Marianne Williamson