Teams and teamwork

The Power of Persuasion: Selling Your Ideas

Why Sell Your Ideas?

Your projects, programs, and career turn on the difference between “no” and “yes.” Part emotional intelligence, part politics, and part psychology, selling ideas is not like tricking someone out of his money. It’s about helping others to see things your way— engaging their minds and imaginations. (Richard Shell, author of “The Art of WOO – Using Strategic persuasion to Sell Your Ideas”)
On today’s knowledge based workforce – “In our world, the right to give orders has largely been replaced by the need to facilitate, lead, and exercise influence.” (Klatt, Murphy, Irvine)

Influence Pre-Work

1. Establish Credibility

Authentic professional relationships
Expertise
Trust

2. Plan

Know how you are perceived by others.
Know your audience – what do they value?
Inside an organization selling your idea is likely to be a series of interactions rather than one single “pitch”

The Pitch

1. Context

Frame Your Idea
State the opportunity

2. Clarify

Explain the details
Why should they act? (in their frame of reference)
Supplement numerical evidence with stories, metaphors, analogies that will speak to the heart as well as the head

3. Create

Deal with concerns or objections
Seek and share ideas

4. Commit

Determine Who will do What by When

5. Close

You’ve already closed the “selling of your idea” and have commitment. This is more about ending the conversation appropriately, saying Thanks. Don’t keep selling at this point …. Get out of the conversation and move on.

Good Boss, Bad Boss: Be a Better Boss

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Why care about Leadership?

Retention – Unwanted turnover = 1.5 – 2.5 annual salary
Capturing Discretionary Effort – What the value of 10% more productivity? How about 100% more?
Less stress

Realities of being the Boss

You are under a microscope
The blame you get, and the credit you get are both exaggerated
Most people land in leadership roles because they were good technicians or practicioners of their work
Leaders underestimate the impact they have on others

5 Things you can do right now to be a better Boss

1. Be a better listener

Take the time
Don’t multitask (especially PDAs)
Seek to understand… not to plan your response
Paraphrase without being a parrot

2. Be a Teacher

It may take more time in the short-run
Don’t micro-manage
Tell people why
Connect them to something bigger

3. Give and receive feedback in abundance

Look for opportunities to offer feedback on a daily basis
Ask your direct reports for feedback frequently – and act on it
Offer both positive feedback, and corrective feedback

4. Be crystal-clear in your expectations

Write important expectations down formally at least once per year
Constantly reinforce expectations
Use several different media to describe important expectations
Practice what you preach at all times

5. Provide consequences for both good and poor performance

People will do what gets reinforced
You are currently getting the performance you are asking for
Be absolutely consistent with consequences
Apply consequences to reinforce both good and poor performance

The Power of Persuasion — How Great Ideas Die

“Selling” is not a bad word – it is an essential business skill. It’s easy to see how some people would think that influencing others is somehow underhanded or unethical:

“Yep… this one’s got really low miles. Only driven to church on Sunday by a little old lady from Pasadena”

In reality, many great ideas die an agonizing death because they have not been properly sold. There also seems to be an inverse correlation between our technical ability, and our willingness to sell. In other words, probably the more technically skilled you are in your area, the less likely you are to want to sell your idea. (With all due respect to the Engineers out there.)

Here’s an ugly truth: marketing is everything. Think of the examples in consumer goods:

8-tracks were far superior in quality to cassettes or records.
BetaMax was most certainly better than VHS
Apple’s Mac has long been superior to any PC.

So if these are any indication, great products and great ideas require great marketing if they are to be adopted.

So what do you do?

First – you have to value the idea of selling your ideas. You need to tell a story about how your idea is going to enhance pleasure, or reduce pain.

Second – Put together a marketing plan. Depending on what you’re doing, it might only be half a page long, but have some idea about what story you are going to tell, to whom, and via what media.

Third – Check out our podcast this week to hear more about Influencing Others

Finally – remember that we are all “in sales”. If you live in a society of more than one person, you will be constantly trying to lobby people to your way of thinking about one thing or another. The sooner we all get comfortable with this reality, the sooner the good ideas will at least seem to “sell themselves”.

The Project Post Mortem: A Good Investment

Every few years I’ll do a job or a project for a governmental organization. Given that I spend about 90% of my time dealing with private sector organizations, I always have to recalibrate when I enter a public sector organization. Most often in government, I experience generally hard-working people frustrated by a bureaucracy resulting in precious little actually being accomplished.

The public sector usually attracts people who are generally risk averse, and as a result, the idea of taking action without perfect information, or allowing oneself to make mistakes and then swiftly correcting them is a hard sell. I seem to spend a ridiculous amount of time just urging people to hurry up and move to action.

In some cases, my problem in private sector organizations is exactly the opposite. Getting people to slow down for just an hour or two to evaluate and document their performance is often branded as heresy. In the case of doing some form of “look-back” after a project or initiative, public sector organizations tend to do a much better job.

There are probably a variety of reasons for this, not the least of which is that public spending is subject to much closer scrutiny, and by a wider variety of interest groups. Nevertheless, private sector organizations would be well advised to take a look at how their cousins in the public sector evaluate and document lessons learned from projects and initiatives.

Most often, the reason given for failing to do a post mortem is, “we don’t have time, besides… everything went well.” When things go very well on a project or initiative is the most important time to do a post mortem. Do you know why things went better than expected? Can you repeat that performance again, or was it just good luck?

To spend an hour or two properly debriefing a project or initiative may be the best investment an organization can make.

Project Post Mortems

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What is a Project Post-Mortem?

A “look-back” from a specific project or course of action
Occurs after the fact
Documents lessons-learned for use in similar future circumstances
Compares expected results with actual results

3 Types of Post-Project Mortems

A full, comprehensive project post mortem for the project or action
Bundle the project with other similar ones and debrief together
No post project review will occur, but it will be a conscious decision rather than just not getting it done

Benefits of a Project Post-Mortem

Documents the wisdom gained through experience, and what could be done differently next time
Understand why things went well (or not), and why
A form of structured feedback
Improves communication

How to Conduct a Project Post Mortem

Decide on scope and who should participate
Establish ground rules, and meeting roles
Conduct Gap Analysis
- Review expected performance or results
- Document actual performance or results
Document action items arising as a result of the PPM

Questions to Ask at a Project Post-Mortem

What are the KPIs for this project?
Where the requirements and goals of this project clear at the beginning?
Did we achieve the business objective?
What went better than expected?
What did not go as well as expected?
How were specific problems overcome?
What changes would be made if we were to do this project over?
Which process or methods caused frustration?
What specific tools or techniques were useful on this project?
Next time we need more/better involvement from…?
Does a smaller group need to go offline and evaluate parts of this project further?

Tips for a Successful Project Post Mortem

Do it as soon as possible after the conclusion of the project or action
Do not assign blame, but rather focus the intent on learning
Talk about team performance
Keep the discussion focused, and do not allow digression to related issues
Look for an 80% solution

3 Things to Remember about Project Post Mortems

Don’t let the project post-mortem become bigger than the project it was meant to assess
Take the time to do it well
Make it a learning exercise – don’t make it about personal blame

Leadership Boot Camp

Find out all about the Wily Manager Leadership Boot Camp:

Why bother?
What it’s about
Who should participate
How it works
What’s covered

Listen to the ‘Leadership Boot Camp’ Podcast:

: Download Podcast (MP3)

Leadership Boot Camp Podcast Slides

Download the Leadership Boot Camp Brochure:

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The von Manstein Matrix

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Who Cares About von Manstein?

Career military man who finished his career advising the West German government
He assessed top performers on how they got things done
Provides guidance on how to organize our time

The von Manstein Matrix:

The Pareto Principle:

80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts
You need to work hard to identify the 20%

How to Get “Lazy”:

Don’t fall into the activity trap. Nobody cares how busy you are, they care what you produce
You need to do more than just work hard
Decide what NOT to do

Applying the Matrix:

Don’t try to keep all people happy all the time
Have a work plan
Practice saying “no”
Assess your direct reports on the matrix
Fire the hardworking, stupid ones

Solutions to Office Layout Disgruntlement

We’ve heard many managers compare their jobs to that of baby-sitter. The only difference being when the kids upset you, you can send them to their room, and the snacks and TV-watching options are better for the baby-sitter.

It is true that managers of people get dragged into all kinds of trivia, and much of it should be ignored. There seems to be no more emotional issue than that of the office layout. Several years ago, people were mourning the loss of office walls, as many organizations transitioned to cube-farms. Now people fight over the size and location of their workstation.

Unfortunately, most managers have very little time/patience/control over the office configuration, so the best they might be able to do is offer some advice to disgruntled cube-dwellers as to how to cope with the physical office reality. Here are some ideas:

Define Your Office Boundaries. This worked for Les Nessman at WKRP, and it can work for you. Don’t acknowledge anyone unless they knock at your pretend door, and certainly don’t put up with people walking through your pretend walls. You might even want to suspend wall paintings from the ceiling to line up with your pretend walls.

Engage in Closed Office Behaviour. Make loud personal telephone calls. If you feel the need for a nap, close your pretend door and sleep like you would at home (unless you sleep in the nude). Need to pick your nose? You’re in the privacy of your own office – go for it. If someone tries to talk to you through a pretend wall, look towards the pretend door, and shout, “I can’t hear you. Would you like to come in here?”

There’s No Place Like Home. Most people spend more conscious hours in their workplace than they do in their homes. You need to make the place comfortable. Buy a portable fridge to put under your desk, as well as some small kitchen appliances (start with a toaster, blender, and espresso machine). You probably don’t control much in your work-place, so make your 8 X 8 part of the empire a castle.

Of course with this new-found freedom, you will also have to respect and ignore others engaging in the same behaviour if the illusion is to be complete. Here’s a YouTube clip on office layout that outlines the perils of being too interested in what’s happening one row over on the cubefarm.

Office Design – Enclosed Offices vs. Cube Farm

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Office Types:

Enclosed Offices
Open Space Concept
Cubicle Farms
Alternative

Why Getting Out of Offices is Great:

More and better communication amongst team members
More direct contact – you end up knowing people better
Space can be modified quickly and easily
Usually people have more access to natural light
Some companies have found it reduces cost because you can put more cubes per floor than offices. (Cisco reduced costs by 37%)
It’s harder for employees to slack off

Why it Sucks:

Reinforces negative notions of hierarchy when some are in cubes, and others in offices
It’s not possible to close a door for privacy
Meeting in your “office” is more difficult
Constant noise and disturbances
To do it well, isn’t really any cheaper than building offices
It lowers morale and productivity
Unless the work environment requires a high level of interaction with others, the lack of privacy is a distraction that negatively impacts productivity

Making it Work:

Over communicate any office-space change. This is a very big deal to people
Be very clear about your reasons for making a change, and make sure you consider the pro’s and con’s
You need much more meeting space in an open concept than with offices
Hire someone to help you through the transition
Ensure white-noise
If you go open – everyone must go, from the CEO on down
Research it well – there is no shortage of information arguing both for and against open office space

One Solution:

If employees spend the majority of their time working individually, put them in offices
If employees spend a great deal of time collaborating, put them in an open office configuration. Perhaps in offices of four to eight people.
If you want you employees to spend most of their time reading Dilbert, put them in cubicles.

Last Word from Robert Probst:

Before his death, the inventor of the cubicle apologized for his contribution to “monolithic insanity”

Time for an Effective Meeting Intervention

If the last meeting you went to sucked badly, you are in good company. A survey of over 1000 North American managers indicated that on average they spend about 17 hours per week in meetings. Of that considerable portion of their work-week, they deemed that one-third of that time was wasted.

The economic implications of this are staggering. If you multiply 6 hours times the hourly rate of those managers times the number of managers in the economy, you begin to see a number with a whole bunch of zeros behind it. Even in your own organization this calculation could easily total in the millions of dollars every year.

More selfishly, ask yourself what you would do if you had an extra six hours every week. Could you work more reasonable hours? Perhaps you could get to those things you know are important but are constantly displaced by the urgent.

This got us to ask the question, “if meetings are systemically bad, and they cost that much what can be done?”

First of all, do not accept that meetings have to be bad. We all seem resigned that we have to write-off a significant portion of our week to something we know is useless. Demand more of yourself, and of your organization.

Second – be part of the solution. This is your problem to solve. Even if you do not chair the meeting, you can raise questions as to how effective they are. Your complacency will get you into more pointless meetings.

Third – insist on a structure. The engineers and accountants always get a bad rap for being anal retentive. While you may want to avoid such people at cocktail parties, invite them to help fix your meetings. A bit of discipline will exponentially improve the value of your meetings.

Finally – figure out what meetings are costing you. What is the cost to the organization by the time they pay a fully burdened labour cost. What is the cost to you if meetings are causing you to work longer hours and give up your leisure time. Profit-driven organizations are usually good a containing costs when they have to. Get them to contain the cost of their meetings.

Then you’ll have more time to read our blog, and download YouTube clips. Here’s one from John Cleese – for those who love British humour.

The Power of Persuasion: Selling Your Ideas

Good Boss, Bad Boss: Be a Better Boss

The Power of Persuasion — How Great Ideas Die

The Project Post Mortem: A Good Investment

Project Post Mortems

Leadership Boot Camp

The von Manstein Matrix

Solutions to Office Layout Disgruntlement

Office Design – Enclosed Offices vs. Cube Farm

Time for an Effective Meeting Intervention

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