Seeking Coastal Utopia

Measure twice cut once. How much money do you have in your bank account? How much gas is in your car? How fast are you going? How many miles before the next stop? “assorted tape measures” by patricia serna on  Unsplash Measures. Metrics. Score. These are needed to succeed. This is the biggest failure of many businesses. Start-ups and mature businesses alike. It affects teams, groups, and individuals. It is a path to failure if you choose to not measure anything that will change behavior. Successful businesses have Key Performance Indicators — KPI’s that are used to identify important metrics or measurements that are necessary for their business success — or survival if they only just started actively measuring. You need to measure your efforts. “baseball field” by Chris Chow on  Unsplash I played a lot of baseball while growing up. That is a statistician’s sport. Everything is measured. Runs, hits, errors, balls, strikes, on-base percentages, assists, puto...

“people working inside white and black room” by Venveo on  Unsplash You can’t lead or manage from behind a desk . Yes, you are right, I am not allowed to say the word can’t — neither are you! Let us introduce another way…as a leader or as a manager, you are extremely ineffective when you stay behind your desk. Stop arguing, it’s true . Unless you are managing a group of automation equipment or robots, then yes, your argument is true. However, the last time I checked, we need humans to do most of the work that we do in business today, and in the effort to keep them involved, they require face-to-face interaction, coaching, and guidance. Humans are messy, therefore we require, no, we demand interaction, and if you are or wish to be a leader or a manager, you limit your ability to actively participate or interact when you are camped out behind your desk. “turned on monitoring screen” by Stephen Dawson on  Unsplash The ability to “see” how the business is ...

“herd of sheep at daytime” by Sean Thoman on  Unsplash So we have stepped outside our comfort zones once or twice in our lives. Yet, do you? Always? Are you here to be a sheep? Or lemming? Herd mentality tends to shape us as a society. Old fashioned peer pressures, social pressures, and even shame tends to keep us in line. But are we expected to stay in line? To follow the rules? If the rules are the ones that are intended to keep you in line, to keep you “normal” from standing out in the crowd, then why not become the person that makes the new rules? Should you consider being a peacock or a flamingo standing among a waddle of penguins? If you are here reading this, you are already in the minority and looking to lead. Are you going to do what you hope to do? We humans take a very egocentric view of ourselves. Most of us believe we are better than the next guy or gal. That we are above the norm, in the “above average” category. But if we are all thinking and believing we ...

Check your ego at the door, please. It is time to wake up and realize you are NOT the smartest in the room, and you really should not be if you wish to be successful. If you are the smartest in the room, maybe it is time to change rooms. Remember in grade school when picking teams? You knew who the good kickers were. You knew those that could roll a perfect pitch. Everyone had the ringers recognized. Why should that be any different at work? Before everyone starts squawking about wanting to have inclusion, I am talking about surrounding yourself with experts. The smartest people available that will force you and the rest of your team to up their game. We talked about the Hawthorne effect in a previous post ; how does that affect you when you’re working at your job? The observer effect makes you change your behavior. You find yourself working harder and being busier (yet maybe more inefficient) because somebody is watching you. When you notice your change in behavior because of t...

Hawthorne Effect Have you ever had the feeling you were being watched? What did that awareness feel like? When you have that feeling, what do you do — do you change your behavior? Do you modify your routine? I am the boss and I am watching. You are the one being watched, what are you doing? You start working harder, being busy. Maybe not necessarily effective, but more active than you once were before you recognized that I was watching. The Hawthorne Effect is real. Having been in and around the manufacturing world since the mid-1990’s we have all seen and been affected by the Hawthorne Effect . Yet the Hawthorne Effect is not just industrial or business; it is social pressure. Having also been into pacing sports for most of my life like running, swimming and biking, the pressure to keep up with the person you are next to or linked to in social networks is not a random phenomena, but an opportunity to better one another. Whether it reflects the competitive spirit, or the pr...