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If You Keep Looking You are Apt To Find It!

It was believed for many years that when you flip it you have a 50/50 chance of being able to call which side will land up. Recently, new research shows that when you flip a coin the coin is said to have a 60% chance of landing on the side of the coin that is face up at the beginning of the toss (Recent Study).

I liken this to how you act when you believe something is true. You will continue to find what you begin looking at from the start of the toss. You will support what represents affirming data and avoid the data that counters your opinion. You do this because you see your belief system as yourself and if you are wrong then you must be flawed. As you move into Thanksgiving week you can choose to look at the positive attributes of those in your life on one side of your coin or you can look for the less appealing qualities on the other side. What side of the coin do you want to be looking at when your sitting beside your friends, relatives and colleagues?

As a leader remind yourself that what you see at the beginning of events will cognitively bias you. You may want to reconsider if it is really true!

Authenticity - Are you really that good

Yesterday I commented on a very well known public speaker on the topic of business on a blog. When my wife said, "why do you have to make such a response?" I have been examining why I would make such a true and not flattering statement of the person. You know the old adage, "If you have nothing nice to say. Say nothing at all." Especially when that person could help you sell books.

Upon reflection, I think it comes from two places - it reminds me as I go on stage with my book, to keep it real. There no superhuman. We are all flawed and when we are in leadership positions it's important that those who speak from the platform are seen as real, not some fictitious icon. It is a long way to fall with those who think they can keep it up a life time.

There must be some envy in making such a statement and dissidence. I have known many leaders who speak publicly form a public persona verses one of authenticity. Even surprisingly those who speak on the subject of Authenticity.

Chris, my wife, and I were at a fund raiser several years ago and we knew the leaders that were speaking. The comments they made behind the podium were not who we knew these people to be. They were speaking to an organization of students. It would be impossible to not be swept away with these leaders comments - they were all such fine speakers. All my wife and I could think about was, what a set up for these kids to learn that there are no trade offs in life and you can really have it all.

Those who do say it is the quality of time that is spent with the family - if that is not looking at the side of the coin you want to believe I don't know what is. Kids really don't care about quality, they just want you around. You can't have both! I am not saying you can't both lead and have a family - you just can not be exceptional at all of the roles at the same time. Getting authentic is the first step to tossing your gold coin face up.

First Time To Finish Baja 500 Race - with CO2 Partner's Sponsorship

Last Night Peter Hajas and Team came across the finish line for the first time. I have always loved the saying Leadership can be tough when your going up a downward escalator. Sometimes you lose and sometimes you win. Today was such a victory for Peter and his team. Up until this year no one in his class of car has ever won let alone finished the race. Yesterday they broke their own sound barrier!

Braking News on Baja Race - This is a race that is almost impossible to finish!

CO2 Partners sponsors Peter Hajas and Team in the UTV Baja 500! They are at mile 445 in the 680 mile race! Peter drove the
first quadrant, his brother the second, another guy the third, and
about now Peter is getting in the car for the last run. In the
beginning of the race at mile 8 they were going to pass a Volkswagen.
The procedure involves a lot of honking, then you pass. As our car
was passing, the Volkswagen politely moves sideways to get out of the
way, but moved the wrong way and hit our car! Peter thought it was
over at mile 8. Their frame is bent and they've been driving the
entire way like that. Otherwise, they are doing well despite running
low on back tires (3 flats). The sponsorship is huge - If the car wins CO2 Partners will exchange $1 total to the car's team!

CO2 official sponsor in Baja Race

CO2 is the official sponsor of and logo has been applied to Car 1818, UTV Class, in preparation for today's Baja Race. The car is, as I type, at the starting line, revving its engines, in Ensenada Mexico, where many locals are lining the street cheering madly..

Are you creating the value of your salary?

Last night at the fundraiser I was sitting next to a really terrific guy who spends his time similar to me as an Executive Coach. When he described his career he mentioned that he worked for General Mills in Human Resources. One day he realized that he had to put his suite coat on to walk down the hall for a meeting if he did not want to get any strange glances. It seems to have been the culture. And he thought how wild that was, this is not for me he said to himself.

Soon after he decided to work for a small company about 120 employees in the suburbs and down the hall from his cube was the OPMer's (Owner President Manager) office. He then reflected how different it was coming to work and realizing that every dollar paid to him was one that the OPMer was not going to pay himself. This observation had not hit him in quite this way before. When he worked in the food business it was a long distance between him and the shareholders - felt like it was miles away - The idea of every dollar spent on his salary is a dollar that does not go to a shareholder (via dividend or retained earnings) was way to far removed. It was then his career really began, because he wanted to keep delivering on the value return to his OPMer. Do you understand your value proposition to your owner? Are you delivering a great return? If your the leader do you think your organization understands this value trade off deeply?

The listening House

The question they ask and answer; What can I do for you?

The listening house fundraiser in St. Paul tonight. Organizations like this that know the guiding question know how to stay focused on those they serve. T night they had us come to there table.

Opentable better than calling

We were across the street from Tejas in Edina after seeing an amazing movie! Skin. And our friends called for a reservation and they were told 45 minutes. I said give me a minute! I logged in to opentable app on iPhone and zip zing we got a reservation for 4 in ten minutes. Walked across the street and they sat us immediately! Advice for leaders who dine out and don't always have reservation. Get Opentable.com

Tim Brown Chief Executive of Ideo - It's all about the Question

This interview with Tim Brown, the chief executive and president of IDEO, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Tim Brown, chief executive of Ideo
Corner Office

Q. What were the most important leadership lessons you learned, and how did you learn them?

A. My very first professional design job was with this little company in the north of England. And they were an old company, straight out of the Industrial Revolution, that made woodworking machinery. They’d never hired a designer before.

Over six months, I redesigned all of their equipment for this one piece of the company. Toward the end of that, the chairman said: “Hey, Tim, I really like what you’ve been doing while you’ve been here. I want to take you to all our other divisions around England, and I want you to advise the people running those businesses what they should do about design.”

I was 21 or 22 years old. Here was this guy who was chairman of this relatively large company in England, taking the advice of me, this really young person. For some reason, he trusted what I was doing. I was bringing in new ideas, he liked them and he wanted to share them around the company. So I tripped around in his Jaguar for a couple of days and we visited all these factories.

And that for me was a really important learning about how the best ideas or important ideas or new ideas can come from anywhere in an organization.

Here I was, kind of the least important person in his company, yet he thought the ideas that I had were interesting enough that he wanted to share them elsewhere.

That is something that I’ve continued to really believe — that you don’t know where the best ideas are going to come from in the organization. So you’d better do a good job of promoting them when they come and spotting them when they emerge, and not let people’s positions dictate how influential their ideas are.

Q. And how does that manifest itself in the way that you run IDEO?

A. I’ve gone to great lengths to try to encourage what I call an emergent culture at IDEO, where people understand that it’s essentially their responsibility to have good ideas. Not about the work they do every day — we all have to do that — but about new ideas for the company. What are we going to do next? What fields are we going to work in? What are our new big things?

Q. What other important leadership lessons have you learned?

A. As a design consultant, I get to work with all kinds of interesting people who are leaders of their own businesses. So I constantly learn from watching some of the great leaders do what they do.

A. G. Lafley is a great example. I’ve spent a lot of time with him over the last seven or eight years, until he retired. I’m a member of his design board at Procter & Gamble, and we would get together every four months, and the various divisions would come and show their work.

He was willing to get involved really early on in new ideas — not in a way where his opinion was overly influencing what was happening, but where his support would really push an idea along quickly. I learned a lot from him in terms of style of leadership, which was involved without being dictatorial. He seems to see his role as constantly reminding teams of what they should be focusing on, rather than telling them whether they’ve got the right idea or not.

Somebody else I worked with a lot is Jim Hackett, the C.E.O. of Steelcase. He’s somebody who, no matter how compelling and short-term an issue might be, is always forcing the conversation up to being strategic. How are we thinking about this long term?

As a designer, I’m always looking for solutions to the problems I see in front of me. And the big trick to being a successful designer is always making sure you’re asking the right questions and focusing on the right problems.

It’s very easy in business to get sucked into being reactive to the problems and questions that are right in front of you. And it doesn’t matter how creative you are as a leader, it doesn’t matter how good the answers you come up with. If you’re focusing on the wrong questions, you’re not really providing the leadership you should.

Q. Can you talk more about that?

A. I do think that’s something that we forget — as leaders, probably the most important role we can play is asking the right questions. But the bit we forget is that it is in itself a creative process. Those right questions aren’t just kind of lying around on the ground to be picked up and asked.

When I go back and look at the great leaders — Roosevelt, Churchill — one of the things that occurs to me is they somehow had the ability to frame the question in a way that nobody else would have thought about.

In design, that’s everything, right? If you don’t ask the right questions, , then you’re never going get to the right solution. I spent too much of my career feeling like I’d done a really good job answering the wrong question.

And that was because I was letting other people give me the question. One of the things that I’ve tried to do more and more — and I obviously have the opportunity to do as a leader — is to take ownership of the question. And so I’m much more interested these days in having debates about what the questions should be than I necessarily am about the solutions.

Q. But answers are often rewarded more than questions, right?

A. That was one of the things that used to make me feel very, very insecure as a business leader — thinking: “Am I supposed to have all the answers? Because I know I don’t.” Then I finally came to realize, well, nobody else has all the answers, either. It’s just that somehow we’ve got this culture of having the answers. It’s partly the media, you know, and some sort of self-image that business leaders have. And partly it’s about trying to convince the stock market that things are all fine. It’s all of these things added together.

To some degree, it’s a cultural thing here in America. It’s a little different when you go to other parts of the world. But I’m personally perfectly comfortable admitting that I don’t know the answers and that I’m more interested in the questions anyway.

Q. What have you learned to more of, or less of, over time?

A. Read the remainder at New York Times

Huge Event In New York At 21 Club Anounces 2nd Printing

Having a Book Event in New York is great fun! If I would have known writing a book could be so much fun I still would have waited - it is a lot of work to get there. As my neighbor Marshall Besikof says, "It took them twenty years to be an over night success."

The night of the party was just a couple of days before my birthday. Marcy Syms decided to surprise me with a huge cake with the cover of the book on it. I took the candle out as not to promote N1H1. Standing with us is Ken Clark CEO of 1-800-Translate, and Regina Lombardi Senior VP with Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.

Marcy Syms, of Syms Clothing Store and now Filene's Basement (you may know Filene's because they have the annual Running of the Brides much like Spain's running of the bulls, but way more classy) threw a great event last night at the 21 Club. It was such an honor to be having a celebration of the second printing of Just Ask Leadership (McGraw Hill 2009) after only two months. Just yesterday I was officially informed by Mary Glenn at the New York Celebration that we are going to have the second printing. What is so satisfying about this - is that when I asked if this is expected, her response as always very straight forward and honest, 'It is always hoped for when we choose a book and an author to work with that we will have this success and you should feel very good because not all authors get there.'

This was a great celebration and totally fun! It was good to see old friends, and meet new ones. Tereasa McBride is CEO of Avant Films and founder of College Bound (Prior founded McBride and Associates, Inc., in 1986), Marcy, Myself and Tom Gottleib CEO of Two's Company.

There were so many people at the event to celebrate and spread the word of Just Ask Leadership!

Presentation Zen. Dive In

On the flight to New York I was reading Presentation Zen. The though that has struck me seemed so similar to one I had when out on a date night with Chris. "when you know your hanging over the edge. Dive in." by joeseph Cambell ( likely got quote wrong from memory) the point is that we often put up barriers due to fear and stories we tell ourselves and refuse to dive in. What is holding you back from diving in to what you want in life? How can you find that one thing that is holding you back? And let it go - like letting go of the edge.

Questions Leaders Ask - BEL Radio interview

A novel which is a series of questions?

Now I understand a non-fiction book about questions but a novel. The novel is written by Padgett Powell. This is intriguing....

The author says he will not defend the book, but he will defend the order of the questions because of how they play off of each other. To him the order of the questions matter...

Ken Morgan and Julie Dougherty Financial News Radio - Business For Breakfast

This morning I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Ken Morgan of KFNN 1510 Radio serving Centeral and Northern Arizona. What a high energy radio interviewer. You can tell he is definitly a morning person - not me. I had to just fake it. If you want to listen to the interview they publish it on their website as a podcast. Or just click on the link below to listen. Link to Audio.