Preston Leadership Blog

Open Mouth, Insert Foot

Who hasn't put his foot in his mouth? I know I have. This week a nice little reminder of the gravity of the situation at RIM came across my desk and I had to pass it along:

RIM’s Heins Quickly Lodges Foot in Mouth

New CEO drops a quote that will live in infamy

Jan 23, 2012, 1:38 pm EST   |   By Tom Taulli, InvestorPlace Writer

 If a company loses more than 70% of its value in less than a year, Wall Street usually cheers when a new CEO comes on board. But in the case of Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM), things have not gone according to the playbook. The stock was down more than 6% Monday after RIM announced new leadership.

Then again, the new CEO — Thorsten Heins — seems to be a lackey of the former co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. Despite the fact that RIM is getting crushed by Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Thorsten actually proclaimed, “I don’t think that there is a drastic change needed.”

Lots of leaders feel that they must fill every moment of silence with their own sweet voices. There are people who virtually never stop talking. I've railed about this before because it drives me bonkers.

Now, if everything they said was intriguing, insightful, visionary and witty, I could listen all day long. The problem is, I suppose, a difference of opinion. They must have thought their words were all those things, but alas I did not.

It's hard to listen for more than 10 minutes when the content is either full of minutia, scattered all over the place, or full of self-aggrandizing. 

Mr. Thorsten, the new CEO of RIM is either totally out of touch or allowed his mouth to continue after his brain stopped paying attention. No need for drastic change? Seriously?

Just Say "No" to Loud Restaurants with Open Desks

Last Tuesday I scheduled two appointments far apart and at either end of the day, meaning I would be wasting a lot of time driving back and forth. So, at 9pm the night before I searched for a Starbucks or Panera Bread where I could spend about 4 hours between meetings.

Even if I could avoid the unnecessary driving, the problem with restaurants is noise and a lack of space to spread out. I had calls to make, but in the car or at a loud restaurant. Fortunately I remembered a much smarter alternative: Open Desks.

At 9pm on my phone, I was able to easily find an office with a door, a landline, coffee, and Internet halfway between my two meetings. The price was right and the process was simple. The next morning I breezed in, gave them my name, and they led me to my office. After they showed me where the coffee, the copier and the bathroom were, and I was working in under 5 minutes.

I didn’t have to do much to find a perfect place to spend 4 hours. Now that I know about this new “on-call office” in Malvern, PA, I actually look forward to being there - and avoiding down time. 

 

Bring Back (a little) Decorum, Please!

Guest post by Chris DiFonzo, Co-Founder and CEO of Opendesks, LLC

It's true, where to seat a prince for dinner as a guest in my home never became relevant.  Still, those professional etiquette workshops that "the man" made me take had value.  Shake, even if someone is visibly sick?  Yes!  Lift your glass when being toasted?  Nope.  Arrive late for calls and meetings?  Obvious.

Then what gives?  Lateness, lack of follow up, and lack of formality are prolific today, even among enterprise consultants, salespeople, managers, and executives.  The worst thing about perpetually more casual behavior in business is it's a death spiral.  Business culture is organic, not static, and our daily interactions either raise the bar or push it down.

Entrepreneurs, freelancers, and creative independents, this is an opportunity to differentiate ourselves.  I'm calling myself out and asking you to join me.  Let's set the example by bringing back (a little) decorum.

Three basics to get us going:

1. Say what you're going to do, and do it.  A simple formula - learn it and live it.  Your word matters; treat it like a contract.  Think before making commitments.  Once made, follow through.
2. Thank people.  Walt Disney was known for writing handwritten thank you's daily. Try it for your most important ones, it feels great and people remember. Always formally thank customers and people who refer business to you.  Failure to appropriately thank others is lazy and tragic.  (Self-disclosure: A little behind on thank you's myself; I'm going to start catching up today.)
3. Learn names and use them.  If I had a dollar for every time I've heard, "I'm not good with names;" I'd be a gazillionaire.  Excuse, copout, laziness.  Make it a point to learn people's names and use them, it's fundamental.  The first rule to remembering names (and anything) is intent to remember.  When we care enough to remember, it's amazing how easy it usually is.

Perspectives on business etiquette vary widely, by person, culture, and organization.  Whatever your perspective is, consider applying a little more protocol, formality, and decorum.  Digging deep, I recall from those workshops, this final point:  It's always acceptable to use one's culture as a reason to be more formal, but never as an excuse to be less so.

- Chris DiFonzo

Baby Boom - erang

Guess what? The Baby Boomers who were planning to retire over the next 1-5 years are reconsidering. Financial setbacks like the one we all experienced are life-changing and it will take us years to fully recover from it. But we have an opportunity that we could have missed.

A re-gentrification of the workforce on such a large scale is unprecedented; and I'll bet that we weren't as prepared as we thought we were.

You see, it takes years of work and lots of skill to build relationships, earn credibility, and demonstrate trustworthiness to customers, strategic partners, and internal colleagues. There is no simple "handoff". When all this knowledge and experience rides off into the sunset, what are we to do? Whatever it is we better act fast – the competition is waiting to pounce.

This is a temporary reprieve; an opportunity to grab as much knowledge as we can. As much as we like to think we've got it all figured out, we really don't. Tap into it while you can.

There's a reason they call it "succession planning". In order to succeed, we need to capture some valuable knowledge and experience in order to prepare ourselves to step up to a level of effectiveness that has taken a long time to achieve.

Step 1: Make sure it's OK to talk about succession, meaning the topic/date of another person's retirement (and the potential delay) could be a sensitive subject! Proceed carefully.

Step 2: Assuming #1 above is open for discussion, ask for some time together on a regular basis.

Step 3: Listen. Probe for detail.

Step 4: Collaborate on a transition plan.

Your goal should be to earn endorsements from senior people and the right to continue the relationships they cultivated in building your organization into what it is today. We might have new, more efficient ways of doing things but we don't get a free pass on business-critical relationships.

This is about ensuring your company's success and giving yourself a head start on an inevitable transition of unprecedented proportions.

 

Getcha Popcorn Ready

In the Philadelphia area (where my office is), and now also in Dallas, Terrell Owens is persona non grata to say the least. Among his many antics, he's infamous for coining the phrase, "getcha popcorn ready", referring to the excitement he was surely going to generate on the field…and we, his adoring fans, certainly didn't want to miss it!

Many of my colleagues, partners and competitors are getting their popcorn ready these days. Like autumn, the hint of an economic recovery is in the air. Ben Bernanke indicated that he expects a slow recovery, but all the same, a recovery is on the way. Should we believe him?

What have we got to lose by being cautiously optimistic?

A wise person said recently that things will never return to the old normal. The new normal will mean even leaner organizations, more careful spending and certainly more regulation and transparency. Politics aside, most would agree that we needed most of this stuff anyway.

But economic cycles come and go. This one is (was?) very deep and will have far reaching consequences. What's not different though, is the fact that many organizations laid off too many people and soon begin to scramble to hire enough people back to capitalize on new business opportunities that will accompany the recovery of 2010. It happens every time.

Why do they keep making the same mistake over and over?

Laying people off is a very dramatic signal to shareholders and analysts. When a company does a reduction in force, it's saying that it's dead serious about cutting costs and/or that things are in fact so dire that it has no other choice. But which is it? Are there unnecessary layoffs? To be sure there are. We've seen it AGAIN.

Just Watch

Get your popcorn ready for a slow and steady wave of hiring. Many companies will return to pre-recession headcounts. Did this exercise save them money in the end? Probably not. Did it win them loyalty in their job markets and communities? Nope. Did it make the surviving employees buckle down? That's arguable, but what is not arguable is the fact that layoffs are a major distraction.

So what we have now is pent-up turnover. Many people are just waiting for the job market to improve to get the heck out of where they are. A wise person (different wise person) also said that companies remember what you do for them in the bad times more than they remember what you do in the good times. I think that this may be true to a certain extent.

Dramatic layoffs coupled with unrealistic expectations and a lack of clear and honest communication is a recipe for delayed turnover. We don't have short term memories when it comes to life-altering events like job loss.

What should have happened? There should be a continual push to drive efficiency. Keep people fully utilized and cross-trained so that when times get tough they can be deployed almost anywhere to help keep the bottom line secure. Don't over-hire.

Allowing legions of people to sit on payroll adding little value, and then cutting a deep swath of jobs when times get tough is not sustainable over the long term. History shows that this practice, though popular, actually costs more in the long run.

We often hear that layoffs are a desperate measure of last resort. When profits are down, training and leadership development is often cut as an "unnecessary expense".

The reason this is a huge mistake is that when times get tougher, companies don't have people ready to step up and save the day. So they punt, lay people off, and everyone pays dearly. To watch them re-hire and train new people, getting back to pre-crunch headcount numbers, is common.

So, I say, 'get your popcorn ready'. The next wave is coming and unfortunately, due to the dumbfounding practices of cutting too deeply, the next down cycle is surely not too far behind. The best advice is to keep your skills sharp, your 401(k) funded and mobile, and your networks alive. We're all going to need them again and again.