Take the Long Way Home

A few days ago I had the urge for some home style soup.  No canned soup but something that might resemble old fashioned make you feel warm on the inside soup.  I opted for one of the cylindrical packages of 15 Bean soup.  I scanned the ingredients to make sure I had tomatoes, onion, garlic, chili powder, and of course, something like sausage.  I got home and was very excited to get going, only to discover that the beans had to be soaked for 8 Hours before the cooking could begin.

There was a short version which had me soaking and cooking the beans for 3 hours, but you couldn't be sure that the beans were fully soaked and you'd get the flavor you set out to get.  So I went for the 8 hour version.  After the 8 hours, I then had to combine all the goodies and simmer for 2 hours.  It all turned out to be a wonderful soup.  The way it was meant to be.

I've come to the conclusion that living in a large city requires finding workarounds.  If you're going from the Valley to the City, you take Wood Cliff to Roscomare and go through Bellaire past the school.  If it's after 3pm, you don't take the Freeway.  The list goes on and on.  The cost of living somewhere that is crowded is finding the secrets that help us endure. And save time.

We do the same thing in our business practices.  We text.  We email. We do what will be the fastest. Check your email exchanges.  It looks more like Jai Alai and VolleyBall than it does a conversation.  The phone still works quite well but we would rather be brief and direct.

It strikes me that we are doing things for expediency rather than effect or impact or quality.

Take a look at your shortcuts this next week and decide which are really time savers.  Once a week, take the longer route.  Make the Steel Cut Oats that take 28 minutes instead of Instant Quaker that just takes boiling water. Make the phone call instead of 4 texts and an email.

Take the long way home and see if it adds anything to your relationships, to the quality of your product,  or perhaps to the Quality of your life, other than just time.

My choice would still be Highway 9 rather than 17.  It gives me a greater chance think.

How Much Knowledge are You Sharing?

A few years ago, my colleagues at the UCLA Center for the Art of Performance presented an exhibition of great ideas.  They invited members of the campus community to submit ideas that would change the world.  The selected ideas were all blown up on posters and featured in a display in the lobby of Royce Hall.  I was honored to have two of my submissions accepted and blown up on posters and displayed.  I can't remember the first of my ideas (I'm still looking for it), but the 2nd one had some potential:

"How much Knowledge are you sharing versus how much are your hoarding?  How many lives would you change if we all focused on sharing for one week?"

I have a confession to make. I have a fixation with knowledge.  I'm driven by the concept of knowledge management and sharing of knowledge.  I'm fascinated by the way that organizations share their knowledge throughout their organization.  How does one part of an organization know what other parts of the organization know?  How does your organization keep track of knowledge? How do you know that someone has actually received and utilized the knowledge you shared with them? And, how does your organization share knowledge?  How do you know that other people know?

I often ask people these questions about their organizations and I'm amazed to discover that the number one knowledge dissemination and storage tool is............Email!  Remarkable, given the fact that it was never designed to be a search engine for thousands of messages.  Yet, most organizations share knowledge by emailing it to their members.  10,000 emails in your in box (yes I did read them) need to be searched every time you're looking for some shred of information.

How does your organization share knowledge?  When I worked at the front desk of my Residence Hall, we had a log book.  We would come to work 15 minutes before our start time.  Our job was to read through the log and find the last time we had initialed the log (marking where we "left off" or the last time we worked).  We then read everything up to right now, and then initial it again.  A brilliant way to both disseminate knowledge (to me) and let others know that I had read what had occurred since I last worked.  This saved my supervisors and fellow workers from having to ask the question "Did Heller know about the change in operating hours?"  Since they saw my initials on Saturday and then saw my initials on Wednesday, they know what I have acknowledged I'm supposed to know.

How does your organization distribute information and store knowledge?  How does it know that people have the information they need to function effectively?  

And most importantly, Are you sharing  knowledge with other people in your organization that will help them and your organization?  

The future of your organization depends on you.  Are you playing well with others and sharing?

Valentine's Day: Showing your Love for Clients and Supporters

Happy Valentine's Day to You!  I hope you had a wonderful V Day and opportunities to feel loved and appreciated.  If you are anything like me, you spent some time this past week thinking about how you would show your love and like for those special people in your life.  And more importantly, you were actually able to do something that expressed your adoration. A card, some flowers, chocolate, jewelry, (hopefully not an appliance), or even an email that professed your special feelings for that someone. And if you were successful in your efforts, you will be appreciated and acknowledged for your thoughtfulness and remarkable capacity to have done just the right thing!

Whether it's Valentine's Day, President's Day, or Groundhog Day, how do you express love for your clients, customers, board members, supporters, and followers?  Do you send them Valentine's Day cards or Candy?  Do you take them out to dinner or buy them gifts?  The answer to all of these questions is probably NO.  

I offer you the following Challenge for next week:

1. Choose one segment of your Organizational EcoSystem (Service Recipients, Donors, Board Members, Staff, etc) 
2. Identify what your Service would be like if that segment ceased to exist (Kind of like "It's a Wonderful Life" for Board Members.
3. Dedicate at least two hours to "thinking about how you would show your love and like for those special people"
4. Choose your own "Valentine's Day" for that segment and shower them with the gifts you've dreamed up in step 3.
5. Start the process again with another segment of your EcoSystem.

If you are successful at following each of these steps, you will change the culture of your organization for the better before next Valentine's Day. And that would be the greatest Valentine's gift you could give yourself and your organization.

PS: Happy Valentine's Day Babette, Ally, and Josh.  You remind me everyday why I'm a very fortunate man.

Orbiting the Giant Hairball: Learning to Manage Creative People

Quite a few years ago, someone shared a remarkable book with me. Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie changed my life and my view of both managing creative people and what it means to be a creative person.  I've made it a practice to go on line about once a year and buy a few copies of the book so I have a supply to give away or circulate among colleagues.

MacKenzie worked many years for Hallmark Cards.  As an artist who later helped to manage artists, he became well aware of the challenges associated with managing "Creatives".  The title of the book refers to organizations or corporations that have to have many rules or hairs that hold them together.  A large corporation might be considered to be a Hairball.

If left to their own devices, artists will create remarkable things.  If allowed to create without constraint, their value to the organization may be limited.  If kept close to the corporation, they will be sucked into the hairball and lose their creative spark.

Managing "Creatives" requires putting them into an orbit that allows them to operate just outside of the gravitational pull of the Hairball and not so far away that their creations have no relevance or connection to the Corporation.

Let's all be reminded that it takes more to manage creative people than it does to manage mere mortals.

Seth's Blog: Those people

Seth's Blog: Those people

A simple statement to remember that we have responsibilities as leaders of organizations and movements that go beyond getting the job done. There are so many ways to provide value and support to our customers, clients, and members.

Digital Civility Part One: Love the One You are With

I was recently engaged in both a verbal and digital interchange with an old friend who asked whether my life was better through my constant access through a smart phone that twitters, messages, facebooks, emails, and ... oh yeah, is used as a phone. She wanted to know whether I really believed that my life was enhanced by such useage. She was also frustrated with friends who had to constantly be IMing over lunch and coffee. After giving a great deal of thought to her questions, I responded with the following email:

I think that you are responding to people's lack of civility and common sense more so than whether twitter or mobile access to communication is a good thing. I most assuredly agree with you regarding the frustration I experience when I'm with people who are constantly using their phones to check emails or tweets or the stock market or ..... I often bring it to their attention by suggesting that they may not know that they can turn off all notifications except for the phone. Since most phones have the ability to be specific about which notifications you want to receive, there is no reason to receive a vibration every time some someone tells you what they are eating.

I do think that civility has taken a downturn in the world. This goes hand in hand with an artificial sense of familiarity. Many students do not know how to address faculty and staff electronically since their primary form of communication is e-mail or instant messaging. Digital literacy is not something we teach and I'm reminded of this on a daily basis.

Returning to your questions regarding the quality of my life related to the availability of more up to date communications; I see it no differently than what advantages might be afforded when you compare reading news on line versus the daily newspaper. If the content is identical which is the case with the New York Times and the LA times, I believe the convenience of access has enhanced my life and made it more convenient to receive information. Similarly, the availability of email for communications has enhanced my access to my friends and colleagues over the use of the postal system.

There is no question that digital communication can detract from the here and now if we allow it to. It can also abuse the nature of a relationship when people choose to send so much digital spew that it truly does not feel like thought generated by the people we know. In fact, the vast majority of digital communication comes in the form of forwarding or retweeting content that the sender found amusing.

I have often shared the following with people who I like, but who feel it is essential to forward every funny thing they find:

If you think I would really like the 55th picture of a kitty on a piano, please print it, cut it out, put it in an envelope, and mail it to me with a handwritten note telling me why you think it's so special and why you believe I would like it. That makes it so much more personal and causes those people to think about whether it's that important for me to know about it.

In regard to the terrible things that happen when people message or tweet with no thought to what they should be doing, I can't agree with you more. I could say the same thing about passing the bag of fries or dropping a cigarette in the car. We've only just recently outlawed the use of phones while driving. We haven't done the same thing with food, smoking, looking back at your kids in the back seat or the 15 other things people do that cause them to get killed.

I believe that the availability of mobile devices has made it easier for me to stay in touch with people I care about like my family and friends. It does allow me the benefit of knowing about things in a more timely method than previously. Does it change the quality of my life? It enhances my ability to carry out things that I was unable to effectively do previously. Is my life better? I suppose I'd have to say yes because it allows me to stay more aware of things that are important to me. And that is a benefit.

The next time your friends at lunch pull out their phones, ask them if they could wait until after lunch to do it. If not, then schedule lunch with them when they think they can. The same can be said for people that take calls and then motion to you that it will be very very short. It's your time. You have a reason to be offended when they show a lack of civility.

Just my thoughts

Ed Koch: "How am I Doing" - more than words

Former Mayor of New York, Ed Koch, passed away this week.  Much has been written about his commitment to the people of New York, his love of the City, and his capacity to engage those he disagreed with in a manner tailor made for national news coverage.

For those who might not remember this advocate for the city that never sleeps, he was often noted for one of his most endearing quotes for fellow New Yorkers he would encounter throughout his travels.  He would simply ask "How am I doing?".  And being in New York City, he almost always received responses much longer than Fine, just great, or thank you for asking.  New Yorkers never shied away from letting the Mayor know what was on their mind and what needed to be fixed. Most importantly, he listened to their responses and for the most part, responded to them honestly and when he could, got their concerns into the hands of City administrators responsible for that area.

We have the capacity, if we choose to use this face to face technique of polling for our own organizations. We can certainly survey and poll our customers, clients, constituents, and followers about the value of our services.  But how many of us directly ask consumers how they think we are doing?  It's a simple enough task.

Social media provides us the the capacity to learn (sometimes dramatically) what the public thinks about how we are doing. Ask a well known hamburger chain if their customers let them know how they were doing recently.  On line communities allow for the public to let us know what they think, even if we don't have an application called suggestion box.  Our challenge is to stay aware of what people are saying and asking about our organizations, and respond in an enhancing manner.

Give great thought to ways you can ask your customers how they think you are doing.  Incentivize by responding with answers to their problems. Express an interest in what is bothering them. And take the time to follow up so that they see actions behind the words that "we appreciate your feedback".  Do more than appreciate - engage in the articulated concern as if it were your personal problem.  If you don't engage with your customers in that way, the problem will inevitably become... your personal problem.

The Care and Feeding of Volunteers: A Reminder for School Administrators

About the time my daughter was graduating from high school a number of years ago, I too was graduating from the Los Angeles Unified School District. That year marked my 20th and last year of being a parent volunteer and leader.

I started to volunteer and lead when my son started in Kindergarten some 20 years prior. During the course of many years of motivations, involvements, participations, interventions, stakeholderisms, and interactions, I learned a great deal about what it takes to be a parent leader in a public school.

I certainly can't say that I learned everything I know from the Kindergarten Parent (KP) experience, but so much was based on the energy that existed there. If you could bottle the energy of KP's , you could run a thousand schools without worrying about who will pay for it.

So much of what I learned came from the way I was welcomed in and made to feel that my presence, involvement, and participation was not simply accepted, but thoroughly needed and appreciated. Some of the pearls I gathered while in my formative years as a parent leader included:

• The Power of Thank You is Magical
• Asking for opinions, and acting on those opinions creates connections
• Asking for help says that you value the person you are asking
• Never presume you've sought and received enough input from volunteers
• Parents want to be treated like partners, maybe even consumers, but not like large students

Like anywhere else in the world of managing things, some administrators get it (GI's), others think they do, and others fail dramatically. The GI's have a long line of parents wanting to help manage the educational adventure. GI's view parent involvement as something more than another evaluation column.

If you are going to be happy where your children go to school, or where you choose to volunteer, look for the GI's. If there aren't any at the top, perhaps it's time to look elsewhere.

Is your Organization The Place where Good Ideas Go to Die?

We've all been in this situation: Board meeting, Boss Meeting, group gathering...talking about what we should do next, how should we fix the situation, finding something that will make us feel fresh, new, and .... being as positive as the Carousel of Progress soundtrack of

"There's a great big beautiful tomorrow"!

But, alas, you remember that the last good idea that saw the light of day from this situation was perhaps the one that made you a part of the organization you're trying to fix.

The question to ask as an organizational manager, leader, or facilitator is:

Is this a place where good ideas go to die?If you have to ask that question more than once, put up headstones for anything that sounds new or innovative... and wave goodbye to people who have those ideas.

How do you avoid becoming the graveyard for innovation.... Make sure that your organization is an environment that promotes discussion, difference, silliness, and the creative process itself. People should feel comfortable to try out ideas without the fear of public embarrassment, or just outright rejection.

But, you're thinking, there's that guy who comes up with these really crazy ideas and we have a tight agenda and we don't have time for this tonight! (I know that guy because much of the time ... it's me)

What you're really saying is, "I don't know how to manage the discussion, capture all the ideas, find a time to process them, and still get out in time to get home to see the beginning of "Lost".

The next time you're about to thank someone for their contribution and follow that by saying "but", stop right in your tracks and figure out how you could use that idea. Who could help make it happen; how can you connect this idea with other things you're trying to do; can you discuss the idea after the time allotted; can you create a time to fully develop this idea?

Think of yourself as trying to catch every idea as it leaps towards it's inevitable demise! If you can save it, you can move your organization ahead. You can also let other idea creators know that this is a place that is safe for them.

If you don't save the ideas, you'll be just another place where good ideas go to die.

Why Shouldn't What you do for a Living make you Happy?

Yesterday afternoon after promising myself and my wife that I really would get out to the backyard to remove the cobwebs over our patio, I found myself running a hot bath and finishing a book that had 15 pages left. As I eased myself down, I thought about the amount of water that I was displacing and tried to calculate the percent of water that I didn't have to run because of the enormity of my body. I also thought about the percentage of the 600 page book I had already read and how long that had taken.

This of course led to my ongoing fascination with using percentages as mental and visual markers to help us better understand the significance of situations.

Take as an example your age.

If I believe that based upon my sex, body type, lifestyle, family history, and other variables, that I will live to be 90, then every 9 years represents 10% of my life. Being 59, I therefore have lived 66% of my life ((59/9) x .10). More significantly, I have 34% of my life left and a smaller percent of my work life left. WOW. That's a pretty eye opening percentage.

About 25 years ago (27.78% of my life ago) I found myself feeling unfulfilled, dissatisfied with what I was doing at work, and in general, out of sorts with the world. I started looking about for causes of this malaise and in the process starting thinking about those things in my life that had previously brought me joy. At first I looked at things in my recent past that brought a smile. The births of my children, my wife, my accomplishments, time spent with friends. These were all in OK shape but then again, when you're feeling not quite right, everything is just OK.

I decided to dig deeper and go back as far as I could remember, posing the question: "As you look back, what comes up as something that made you happy?" One of my first "happy making" memories was making Batman for Governor buttons. In actuality, did I love "making" the buttons? NO. I made them with something called a Mattel VacuForm. I used to burn myself, cut my fingers, and I hated how long each one took to make.

But I loved selling them. I loved the excitement of kids running around the playground wanting them and buying them for $.25 each. I even enjoyed getting in trouble with the Principal who told me I couldn't sell them anymore because of all of the commotion. (He did end up buying the remainder of my inventory at retail and used them as incentives for "good" students).

I also had very happy memories of public speaking, acting, and performing in different bands. I even had a great memory of being asked to leave the elementary school orchestra (I played drums) because I chose to blow my nose at a somewhat inopportune moment with great volume.

When I looked at the list, I realized that there were a fair number of things that weren't part of my life at that time. I wasn't acting, I wasn't doing anything entrepreneurial, I wasn't doing very much public speaking, and I hadn't been performing musically, or even playing any music. As I kept looking at the things I wasn't doing, I realized that I could be doing a number of them at work.

My job at UCLA afforded me the flexibility of presenting workshops as often as I liked. And if the topic was of value to the community, I could write my own script and perform it. And if an idea took hold of my interest, I could develop it, find the resources for it, and turn it into something of value. I learned of the value of Intrepreneurship (operating like an entrepreneur inside of an organization instead of on your own). I also learned that by integrating some of the things that used to make me happy into my current life, I would find greater joy in what I was currently doing.

What percentage of your life is filled with things that make you happy? Wouldn't it make sense that if you knew what contributed to your happiness, and you were able to integrate that into your work life, you would like what you were doing for living.... or perhaps you might even think that it contributed to your life?

The next time you're feeling a bit out of sorts with the world and have enough energy left to look for the reasons why, look backwards instead of fantasizing about the future, and find those things that used to put a smile on your face. You may discover that they are simply missing from your current life and you need to find a way to get them back. To quote a great Beatles title, "Got to get you into my life" would be a pretty good directive for those things that used to make you happy.

What Value are you providing?

People join movements, organizations, or participate in activities for a wide variety of reasons. One of their primary reasons is the value they receive from their involvement. Personal value can only be calculated by the participant but we can take some pretty educated guesses at how we figure that one out.

I participate or join because:

1. I like the people involved

2. I like what they do

3. I believe in what they do

4. People will think I'm cool if I am part of it

5. It makes me feel good to be part of it

6. It makes financial sense

7. I will make connections that I couldn't make otherwise

8. I can't put my finger on it but I feel much better being a part than not

You get the idea that there are numerous value calculations that we each make prior to committing any time, money, or both.

As an organizational leader, do you think about what value you bring to your members? When was the last time you made a list of benefits for those who are involved? Think about the organizations that put the list of values right in front.

The American Auto Association (AAA) has more member benefits than anyone could possibly use in a lifetime, yet the primary reason we pay for the card is towing and maybe the occasional check to see if the hotel you are staying at offers a AAA discount. If you avail yourself of all of their other discounts and freebies, congratulations and you have discovered that there is much more value than the cost of membership.

This is not a promotion for the auto club. It is a promotion for the thought of considering what value you bring people you know, members and participants in organizations or movements, and moving you toward a serious discussion about benefits that you provide.

If you can't identify the benefits you provide, don't expect those you want to convince or lead to identify the benefits themselves.

The Importance of Mediocrity and Why we deserve what we are willing to accept

A few years ago, I found myself chatting with a soon to retire administrator at my daughter's school. I was expressing my frustration over scheduling conflicts for an important parent meeting we were hosting. As we walked to find an unoccupied classroom, the administrator attempted to console me by saying "you have to remember, it's just a public school".

One of Google's definitions for "just" is: "merely: and nothing more; "I was merely asking"; "it is simply a matter of time"; "just a scratch"; "he was only a child"; "hopes that last but a ...".

Using the first of the examples, that administrator was attempting to make me feel better by telling me that this was merely a public school and nothing more. Thus, in essence, stating that my expectations needed to be lowered because I had forgotten that public schools have to be accepted for what they are, and nothing more.

Asking me to accept a bad situation because it cant' be changed begs the question of accepting givens. If I accept what someone else tells me is a given, I choose not to vest myself in fixing the problem. If I accept someone else's report that "everything is fine", I am simply saying "I trust your judgment and/or I don't have the time or ability to check things out myself".

Let me pause for a moment and state unequivocally that this is not a treatise on the merits of micro management or promoting a strong lack of trust in others abilities or their intentions. I don't have time to do all of the tasks assigned to others, nor do I believe that this is ever healthy for organizations. That being said, I am much more interested in the concept of acceptance of bad situations, or as I like to put it, "the immutable nature of mediocrity".

Accepting Public Schools as being "just public schools", pays homage to their inability to change. If I don't challenge the position of a retiring administrator who has come to accept the immutable nature of Public Schools, I deserve all that comes with the sorry state of public education. And accept that my children will be provided with a mediocre education.

The next time someone uses the word JUST as a modifier, or asks you to accept the situation as a given and just, well.... immutable, you have a choice: Accept, or challenge and change.  

(Originally published February 27, 2008 at Kennheller@blogspot.com)

A one month commitment to myself

It's now safe to talk about New Year's resolutions because it's February. December and January drive us to making wild promises to ourselves and others. Whether it's working out, eating well, polishing our resume, finally planning for something that you've talked about for years, or just a promise to do SOMETHING.

I decided to make a resolution to commit to writing one blog post per day.  I didn't think I had the stamina to come up with 30 daily posts.  But I might be able to pull off 28 days.

So I waited until February to start a new habit that I only have to do 28 times.

I'll not post drivel and will do my best to post things that I think have value to others.

By the way, Doing Good is a term that describes the work that Non Profit and Social Benefit Organizations do.  It also applies to individuals who try to be helpful to others.

Doing Better at Doing Good is an expression I've used for years to describe the work of helping non profits get better at their core function: Helping others and Just Doing Good.

I hope you'll find the things I post and the links I include to be helpful for you and help you do better at doing good.