At some point in our recent history it became acceptable to take whatever possible perceived slight and propel it to a public tirade…

At some point in our recent history it became acceptable to take whatever possible perceived slight and propel it to a public tirade against all things we don’t agree with. Whether it’s red coffee cups or Black Thursday shopping the holidays are a perfect target for this false fury on the internet. Any slight, real or perceived, is now the catalyst for a tweet storm or Yelp review with all the civility of an Archie Bunker diatribe. Why do we allow ourselves to fall into this mode of thinking and what can we do about it?

Salespeople are not out to ruin your holiday

In the vast majority of cases, salespeople are trying to do their best to help you while making it through the crush of harried, rude customers who live by the mantra, “The Customer is Always Right.” (Personally I think whomever came up with that slogan never actually worked with customers, but that’s just me.) Try imagining dealing with a hundred demanding, complaining, immature kindergarteners in an 8-hour day and you start to get the idea what it can be like on the sales floor. Yes, I know there are sales people out there who want nothing to do with their jobs or the customers they are there to assist. Those are the rare ones and should not be used as an excuse to mistreat or abuse anyone working with the public.

Would your grandmother approve of your behavior?

If you stand back and watch the way some people act during holiday shopping the only thing you can imagine is their grandparents would have been appalled. Failures in common courtesy, decorum, and behavior become passable because they might miss out on the last hoverboard on clearance. How difficult is it to take advantage of the holidays to act the way we should be acting all year long, and recognizing people for showing the common decency and behavior which should be the norm?

You will still be loved even without that “thing”

For some reason we have gotten into the mindset of, if we fail to deliver on a holiday wish, we will no longer be loved by the recipient. Honestly if that is truly the case you were never loved in the first place. Do your best to give from your heart but don’t attach your happiness to the happiness of another.

“Your” holiday is not more important than “my” holiday

There are multiple holidays and traditions observed during this time of year, all equally important to the people who observe them. In none of those holidays is the mandate to diminish, criticize, attack, or downplay any other. (If you think “your” holiday does subscribe to that thinking, you need to do some reading and get educated.) Show respect for the observances of everyone. You don’t have to prove yours is the best by diminishing another. Also, any time “your” holiday is not given top billing and the genuflection you feel it deserves, it is not an attack on the holiday or the religion. That’s a self-important, arrogant view that has no place this time (or any time) of year.

Remember the “why”

Remember why you celebrate your holidays. Think about how you would explain their importance to a child. Follow those words carefully even in crowds of bustling shoppers or at 4 a.m. in line on Black Friday. Make the greatest gifts you give this year be to the people you don’t know and may not ever see again. Carry the gifts you receive forward and know that the warmth and caring of the holidays doesn’t come with a receipt, a commercial, or a sales flyer. It’s time to let your heart grow three sizes.

Dress for the job you want and the person you are. Respect yourself and let it be reflected through the image you project.

There’s a challenge all writers encounter at one time or another (and for many of us on a frequent basis) and that’s the lack of…

There’s a challenge all writers encounter at one time or another (and for many of us on a frequent basis) and that’s the lack of inspiration to write. It’s not that we don’t want to, far from it, but nothing comes to mind that fires our spirit and compels us to put words to paper. When writing content personally as well as professionally the dilemma is different but similar.

Professional content always has an underlying objective. In situations where the spirit is not moved you can fall back on the old standards of the Top Five Reasons and Ten Things You Didn’t Know tropes. It’s a cheap way to crank out some copy but those kinds of link bait titles will get you the clicks you were hoping for. Personal content is different. You want it to not only be read but also to have an impact. There is more invested in the text because it is just that, personal.

How do you write when you have nothing to say? Ironically enough, when you think you have nothing to say is typically when you have the most to say. It’s not a matter of content, it’s a matter of having something stand out enough to warrant the effort and prime the stream of consciousness. What do you do when you want to write; when you can feel that tickle at the back of your head saying, “Why aren’t you writing?”

This is yet another reason I recommend keeping a work journal. Even in draft mode, writing a response email could be problematic. Capturing your thoughts and feelings in a work journal immediately allows you to vent your frustrations while also planning a response AND documenting the issue should it be a recurring one.

In the business space so many organizations struggle with how to take new ideas from their teams and turn them into actionable plans to…

In the business space so many organizations struggle with how to take new ideas from their teams and turn them into actionable plans to benefit the organizations and their customers. Vendors are happy to claim to have the next great solution to the process of idea management, but I suggest these tools are not necessary if you take a simple series of steps to implement a stage gate process to handle receiving new ideas as well as evaluating them prior to developing an implementation plan.

Capture

Ideas happen anywhere. The best ones often happen at the least expected moments…and unfortunately are often lost just as quickly. If you’re looking to gather those diamonds of wisdom and insight, the first stage gate in your process needs to be a way to capture those ideas.

This is a point where determining a good idea from a bad idea is irrelevant. Capture and move on. The question arises though, “don’t I need some sort of ideation solution for this to be efficient?” Nope. If you’ve defined your stage gates properly, all that tool will do is restrict rather than encourage new ideas.

Review

This is when the stage gates come into their own. Each idea needs to be evaluated on it’s own merits, in comparison to other ideas, and to the greater strategic goals driving the organization. Some SGP (stage gate processes) count on voting, scoring, and gamification. All these methods have their value, but personally I have never seen one rise head and shoulders above the others.

Spending time with a good business process consultant or with your team as a whole can help you define the criteria ideas need to be evaluated upon in your organization. Whatever the process you define, test, test, and then test again. Nothing can kill an idea creation process faster than the people contributing to it losing faith.

Feedback

This is the part most SGP fail to take into consideration. Once a person has submitted an idea, so often it disappears into the “black box” of ideas and they never hear anything back on their submission. What may be an extended evaluation process can come across as apathy towards new ideas without feedback on status and evaluation. Defining how you keep your idea creators as part of the idea process can make or break the life span of your solution.

There are a number of additional factors needing consideration in an idea processing solution, but take one thing as a rule right now: new ideas are the lifeblood of any successful organization. Whether innovative or evolutionary, without new ideas organizations will stagnate and fail. Find ways to make your organization a fertile place for new ideas.

Originally published at www.theideapump.com on August 25, 2014.

Change of venue

Almost all of us hit a point in the day where we lose momentum in our work. We may have a successful, busy morning only to come to a grinding halt after a meeting or lunch. We may get stuck in an “analysis paralysis” mindset while switching projects. There’s any number of reasons we feel we have lost our momentum. The question is, what do we do about it?

Change of venue

Get out of your chair. Take a walk. Look out the window. Do anything to change your surroundings for a few minutes. The change of scenery coupled with the change in blood flow is sometimes all that’s needed to get the mind working and the energy to return.

Keep “task candy” handy

“Task candy” in my vernacular are tasks that are quick, easy, low impact, and need to be done. They should take less than 5 minutes to complete and have an obvious result when finished. For example, “clean files off desk” is a good example of a piece of task candy. Keep a stack of these tasks on sticky notes or other scraps so you can take one, complete it, then wad it up and throw it in the trash. A task is done, the sense of completion is present, and you now have momentum to move on to your next thing.

Caffeine or other stimulants

We often turn to our invaluable ally, the coffee cup, when the momentum is lagging. As with any external stimulant while there may be a short term lift there will always be a letdown (usually greater than the lift). I won’t be swearing off coffee anytime soon, but I have found switching to water after lunch rather than another cup of joe takes the edge off the post lunch doldrums.

Checklists

Often our momentum can be lost when we don’t have a clear sense of direction for the next steps we need to take. Checklists can assist with this. Take time when you’re not feeling particularly creative or inspired and make a list of the steps you need to take on a current project. Now when you cross into the slow part of the day, you can glance at the list and let it do the heavy lifting to decide what should come next.

Work Journal

This requires a little explanation. When you hit a loss of energy take a few minutes to journal the work you have done so far. Since you are just documenting what has already occurred, it doesn’t require any creative thinking. The process of journaling can often draw out things that were missed or actions that need to be taken, all of which can instill new life in the efforts you need to expend for the day.

Momentum isn’t about moving forward at full speed all the time. Momentum is about keeping just enough forward motion to get you through the valleys and over the hills without working harder than you need to.

If you found this helpful and think others might as well, please like and recommend this article.

…or how to stop working your ass off.

…or how to stop working your ass off.

Like many middle aged slightly overweight men I have a little used gym membership. It’s not for lack of understanding the value of physical fitness but rather a perspective as to the futility of the effort at times. Let me explain.

When you walk into my “lunk free” gym the first this that strikes you are the treadmills. I’ve never counted them but 50 wouldn’t be an unreasonable guess as to how many are stretched out in a mechanical gauntlet as you enter. Depending on the time of day you’ll see from a few to a mob of people all in motion at various speeds along this collection of stationary taskmasters. People put in their 45 minutes, running or walking, on their quest to improved health. Few of them will argue that fitness is a “build to a conclusion” activity but rather a continuing process. Compare that to the productivity treadmill we put ourselves on and there’s some realizations that come to light:

Stop looking for “the” tool

If you think about the gym you’ll remember the number of different machines and workout areas they have. One machine for biceps, one for triceps, one for running, and one for glutes. This specialization is needed to make the biggest impact on the muscles in those groupings. Why then do we feel that productivity should be any different?

We search for the one uber-tool or technique to solve all our problems. The “productivity unifying theory” is a fallacy and a waste of time. If we reallocate 1/2 the time we waste on trying new tools to understanding our requirements and what works best for us, we can lock in on the tools that will work in short order.

Examine but do not adopt someone else’s process

When was the last time you went to a bowling alley? One of the dubious experiences in the sport is the rental of bowling shoes. No one I know has ever been 100% comfortable in their rented shoes, be it for the shoes themselves and how they fit, or for doubt in who was wearing them last.

Productivity processes are like bowling shoes (bear with me…this is going somewhere I promise.) Professionals never go into an alley and rent their shoes. They look at the ones other professionals use, find ones that work for them, and then break them in to get the greatest benefit possible. This can be applied to any piece of sporting equipment — golf club grips / baseball mitts / basketball sneakers, etc. Take time to look at what others are doing but don’t kid yourself that you will be able to slip into their shoes and have the same level of success without making the fit just right.

Educate yourself to be productive

There’s an old joke about a building supervisor dealing with a leak on his property and needing to call a plumber. The plumber arrives, spends five minutes, hits the pipe once fixing the leak and leaves tendering a $900 invoice. When the outraged super demands an itemized invoice, the plumber returns: “$50 for service call, $850 for knowing where to hit.”

Productivity is as much art as it is science. Both require the development of skills and techniques as well as an understanding of the nuances of the mediums being applied. There is no single course, class, video, instruction guide, or degree that gives you everything you need in one shot. The more diversified your studies and research, the more effective your resulting processes will be.

Read about methodologies from both people who use and who reject those approaches. Learning the weaknesses is as important as understanding the strengths. Couple that information with introspection into how you operate most efficiently and you’ll get headed in the right direction.

Productivity isn’t a methodology or a metric…it’s a mindset.

Being productive is a matter of accomplishing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, without sacrificing quality of life or other accomplishments. Setting realistic goals, adapting to changing situations, and learning new ways to keep moving forward are all part developing those productivity muscles.

It’s time to get off the treadmill and start mixing it up.

Anyone who knows me may find this to be a strange topic for me to write about as I have a bit of a reputation for being impatient with…

Anyone who knows me may find this to be a strange topic for me to write about as I have a bit of a reputation for being impatient with people at times. While I prefer to think I am patient when patience is required or desired, I cannot argue their point as to having slipped into “hurry mode” more than once. There is one time I do pride myself on being patient and I recommend others do it as well…patience when dealing with people in the service industries.

As a young man I did my time in the retail world, from cashier through management, even through loss prevention detective. One thing I took away from all that was, those jobs can be some of the most difficult jobs out there. Not because the work is exceptionally hard (sometimes it is, but not always) but that the people you interact with can be exceptionally difficult.

We’ve all seen sites such as http://www.notalwaysright.com where horror stories of bad customer behavior are shared to a knowing laugh and wink from others in the business. What concerns me is the number of customers now who wear being belligerent as a badge of honor. The people who wish to penalize for an honest mistake and who’s first words aren’t, “don’t worry about it, it was an honest mistake” but rather are, “so what are you going to do for me then?”

Where did this sense of entitlement come from when dealing with people who’s jobs are specifically to help us? Why the attitude, lack of understanding, and downright attitude of superiority? When dealing with any one in any profession, we should treat them as we expect to be treated, not expect and then treat poorly if expectations are not met.

Yes, I know, there are people out there who you try to be nice to but they just make it so damn difficult. They act like they’re doing you a favor doing their job and you’re nothing but a bother to them. For those, why would you give them the benefit of bad behavior on your own part to give them an excuse (no matter how faulty) for their own poor attitude?

As we approach the shopping season keep this thought in mind: look at the line you’re standing in waiting to check out. Look at the people in that line; odds are good they are just as impatient. Now look at the person working the register. Would you want to be them, dealing with all those miserable, impatient people all day for a wage just a bit above minimum? Don’t like the sound of that? Then be the one that breaks the chain. Be nice.

I have to concur. Writing here and on LinkedIn there is one common decision that has to be made: do you write for content or do you write for views? The two unfortunately do not seem to overlap and it winds up pressing the author to writing a mix of the two just to draw in enough followers to read their substantial writings.

That’s great news. I’m looking forward to the additions.