Posted by Michael Rosenberg on Oct 27, 2009 in
Change Management,
How to Influence People,
Innovation I was talking to a senior executive who told me, “It takes 7 years to change a culture and I don’t even intend to be here that long.” His statement reflected the culture of the company – short-term fixes, no commitment and focus on numbers over people. What I told him blew him away. “I can change the culture within 6 months.” I said. “Not only that, I have the instrument to prove it.” I told him about the Tetrahedron Culture Instrument and how it measured culture from a number of angles. “Okay,” he smirked, “then how can you change the culture in such a short time.” Here is how.
1. Start at the top
What are the values of the organization? What are your goals and the strategy to get there? The first place is a strategic planning session that aligns with the values and ethics (and yes, they are different but more on that later) of the organization.
2. Look at the rewards
The fastest way to change a culture is to change the rewards structure of the organization. People respond to how they are punished or rewarded. Do rewards, including compensation, recognition and promotion, aligned to both the values of the organization and the goal/metrics? If you reward people who “hit their numbers” even in conflict of the organization’s values, you may do well in the short term but the long term sustainability and values of the organization will be undermined. Recognition for good things is more motivating than punishments for bad. People who are rewarded are engaged to achieve. People who are punished are disengaged and hide.
3. Communicate and train
Coaching and mentoring are very important. Great leaders create more leaders. They help their people develop the skills they need to succeed and recognize their strengths. Often intuitively they use the Appreciate Inquiry model and focus on strengths and solutions rather than weaknesses and problems.
When it is all done, you measure the before and after and, within a short period, you will start to see a significant shift in the culture.
Tags: communication, culture, ethics. leadership, recognition, rewards, strategic planning, values
Yesterday, I attended another “Meet the New Media” event. It was about how to use and measure social media.
The event is sponsored by Rebecca Antonelli. I have know Rebecca for years and, in fact, hired her for a brief period in the 1990s to help promote my business.
However, the real reason I went was to hear Mark Schurtman talk about analytics. Mark works with me on a freelance basis helping my clients understand their analytics. I was hoping that I could pick up a few leads from going to the event — although I had to leave early.
I don’t pretend to understand social media. I started a blog last year to promote my direct mail and search engine optimization business. I am on LinkedIN, but have not made any effort to really work it. However, I did have a recent pleasant experience trying to get information for my son about starting a Toastmaster’s club in Israel.
I am not on Facebook, I do not own a digital camera, I do not know how to use my cell phone except to make calls. Twitter makes no sense to me.
I remember manual typewriters and lead type. Maybe I am a dinosaur, but I have learned to embrace disruptive technology and have become an expert in search engine optimization and now creating websites.
But the question I had after listening to the presentations yesterday- Is it worth the effort? When I started the blog I was hoping to create a dialog about marketing and build my reputation as an expert in the field. I have been in business on my own for over 20 years and feel that I have something to contribute to the would-be entrepreneur.
The talk is about “community.” The chief rabbi of England, Jonathan Sacks, wrote that a community is where they know your name and miss you when you are gone. I am active in the community here in Raleigh and know lots of people. I know people through Toastmasters, the Jewish Community, bicycling, business, etc. The advantage of being self-employed is that I can associate with who I want to associate with. If I didn’t want to be part of the network, I wouldn’t do it.
But is being part of inside919 or any of the other “virtual communities” going to help me get new business? That’s my bottom line — what can I take to the bank to pay my bills?
As luck would have it, one of the newsletters I subscribe to had an article about large companies banning social media in the workplace. Too much of a distraction.
Long ago I gave up networking as a way to build my business. Everybody trying to sell me things — and very few had the contacts I needed for my business success. I kept seeing the same people over and over again and could never figure out how they made a living. On the other hand, my clients were too busy actually running a business to take the time.
I served in the Israeli army many years. There was a saying, “They can’t hassle you more than 24 hours a day! After that, it’s a new day!” Is social media something I need to embrace to get more business or is it just a way to waste time and energy?
Maybe I don’t know how to set up my blog correctly to take advantage of the possibilities. Would like some comments, which you can do by clicking on the headline. Haven’t quite figured out all the settings WordPress. I have comments so I can filter them before they become public to avoid span.
Look forward to starting the dialog.
One week from today, I will get on a plane and go to Israel. I enjoy the full rights of a United States Citizen and I am going to Promised Land as a Jew. I have two countries to call home. Israel is now seen as the Promised Land to millions of Africans who are fleeing their war-torn countries in search of a better life. While living in Israel for me is the dream of my forefathers, living in Israel for these refugees is a means of survival.
Refugees come from all over Africa including Ertieria, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and several others. In order for them to arrive in Israel they need to go through Egypt, which was often the most dangerous part of their journey. In Egypt they have Bedouins who will kidnap refugees and allow the rest of his family to go to Israel and make some money and send it back to the Bedouins in order for them to release the family member. Also, the Egyptian army would shoot anyone they saw trying to cross the border from Egypt into Israel. One of the children we play with had his brother and his father killed as they tried to escape Egypt into Israel.
These refugees come to the land of Israel because Israel is the one country where they do not need to fear for their lives on a daily basis. However, the situation in Israel is far from ideal. The Israeli government’s official position is to keep out the refugees, and any that are found once they do cross over are immediately sent to detention facilities. After the refugees are released they generally move to Tel Aviv. The government has a policy that the refugees should not live in the center of the country, but until recently this policy had been ignored.
For Israel this is a very complicated situation. On one hand as the Jewish homeland we feel that we have an obligation to help an oppressed people who are being persecuted in their own countries, but on the other side there is no way that Israel can absorb the huge economic, social, and security burden that these people bring with them. I have heard as many as 14,000 refugees are already in Israel, but the potential lies for millions to cross in if Israel opens its border. This would pose a huge security risk and lead Jews to be a minority in our own country.
I am a part of a grassroots volunteer organization known as Fugee Fridays. Every Friday we would pick up food from the food market in Tel Aviv and have drivers take the food twenty minutes and distribute it to three shelters for African refugees. Our usual routine is to have some of the volunteers go around and ask approximately sixty vendors for any extra food. We collect all types of food ranging from beets, to pita, to watermelon. We bring all the food to one spot and sort which food is good and into different baskets for each of the shelters. We load the baskets in cars and than we have people drive the food to the shelters. After we dropped off the food, we would go play with the neighborhood children for about an hour.
The government does not provide any significant government aid programs so volunteer organizations such as ours are needed to help these people adjust to their new lives.
I take pride in being one of the volunteers in Fugee Fridays. We are not there to make a political statement or in order to impress others. Rather we are just trying to help a group of people who are less fortunate. In March of 2008, four of my close friends saw that there was lots of food being thrown away at the market every week and there were lots of hungry refugees just minutes away. One week they showed up to the market and loaded a car with food, and they have done so ever since.
Every Friday evening we are running around with the kids and chasing them. I like to think of myself as one of the children’s favorite and they all call me “HaShamen” which means fatso in Hebrew. I run around with the children and usually have one on my shoulders while another one of the children is hitting me. One of my proudest accomplishments is that I thought one of the children how to say “What you talking about Willis.”
These children are really remarkable. They are a group of 20 children who live in the same cramped shelter with their mothers. The shelter is directly across from a brothel. These children have grown up with very little stability in their lives. There is a bond and friendship between all these children that it is obvious they are extremely loyal and worried about one another.
It was not until volunteering for about three months did I really understand the significance of what we were doing. I was delivering the food into one of the refugee’s home and I was invited in to have a cup of tea with the patriarch of the family. He was from the country of Chad and he told me about his personal narrative. He told me about the hardships he had gone through including his escape into Israel. However, his overall message was that he felt so blessed to live in a country that has security and where he was able to work even if it was only as a pool boy at the Hilton. He expressed to me how grateful he was for the weekly food that we provided with him and his family. Before that I was just viewing our work as giving food to people in need, but after walking away I realized that the real importance of the work we do is letting these people know we care about them. His entire life he had to fear for his life because of his race, but here are a group of strangers who dedicate their own time to show him we do care about him.
For me it is an incredible experience to be a 22-year-old Jewish American from Raleigh and to feel that I am having a positive influence on a 8-year-old Eriterian who has experienced hardships worse than I ever could imagine. For all the amount of time that me and the other volunteers have contributed to the refugees, I know that our impact will last much longer than the food.
Posted by Steve on Aug 24, 2009 in
How to Influence People I was pleasantly surprised on Friday when I got a call from Lee Friedman. I meet Lee when I first came to Israel in 1975. Lee was on the kibbutz with me. I saw him once in the states — 25 years ago at a mutual friend’s wedding in St. Louis.
Then nothing….until last week I get an e-mail saying he read the blog and congratulated us on being married 30 years. He remembers our wedding. The last time I knew had heard from him was he was in California.
Friday night at 9 we get a call saying he is showing his son Duke and was on Franklin St. in Chapel Hill. Rushed out to meet him and his son, Oren.
Even though all those years had passed, it was as if we hadn’t seen each other for a week. He is a bit balder than he was, but we quickly recognized each other. So many memories! He remembered by old Israeli army stories and the wedding.
The visit was too brief, but Lee was taking a tour of the entire East Coast showing his son the various universities in the area….hopefully, we’ll get together a bit sooner the next time.
Anybody can put up a website. It really doesn’t take much skill.
However, to put up an effective, profit-making website, it requires a team. I have discovered this as I put together www.marketplace-solutions.com and have found new clients for SEO.
A website is like a store. It’s not strictly about location, but it is important to be on an good server. Trying to save a few cents with cheap hosting is a waste of money.
The owner of the store provides the merchandise. The store is filled with whatever the owner wants to sell — be it service, shoes or SEO. There is an old adage that nothing kills a bad product as fast as good advertising. The owner has to provide a good quality product at a competitive price.
The job of SEO is to get people to the store. That’s what traffic is all about. Really doesn’t matter where the traffic is coming from or what they are doing when they arrive for the Search Engine Optimization master. SEO is about keywords, links and ranking reports.
The job of the designer is to make the store attractive. That initial reaction when a prospect sees the website is critical. Is is nice looking? Do I want to buy from these people?
Now is something I have never really thought of — the marketing person. I live & breathe marketing. I am in expert in direct marketing. However, I have found someone to help interview clients and give me an analysis of what needs to go on the website to get the people to actually buy! Again, think of the store.
You’ve brought them in (SEO), you have a nice store front (design), but if the merchandise isn’t laid out correctly, you lose the all important sale. What is the client expecting to find? How does he/she react? That’s the subject of the book, “Web Design for ROI.” I have found someone who can do that job for me — a unique idea in the terms of putting up a website. Webmasters and not marketing gurus.
But you can have a beautiful store, lots of traffic, well displayed merchandise, but if the foundation is weak, it’s worthless. That’s the function of the coding people. It’s about establishing a strong foundation with Cascading Style Sheets, HTML validation and Content Management Systems. The end user doesn’t see it. But the end user doesn’t see the plumbing in a store, either. Yet if it isn’t working, everyone knows it.
I have put together a team that takes my extensive knowledge of direct marketing and translates it to the web. I have a designer (Sharon), an SEO expert (Daniel), a marketing strategist (Mark) and a website/CSS expert (Scott.) I also have other talent I can call on for other tasks, especially polishing the writing.
My team is a virtual team — this cuts overhead and increases efficiency. MarketPlace-Solutions offers a holistic approach to websites to help clients thrive in this tough economy.
Tags: competitive advantage, increasing sales, search engine optimzation
I am currently reading the book “Why GM Matters.” I recently finished the books “Gamble” about the war in Iraq and “What Would Google Do?” In addition, I am trying to assimilate “Web Design for ROI.”
Although these books are all different on the surface, I realize that all of them are about corporate culture. It’s a term Mike uses a lot.
The only way GM can survive, according to the book, is by changing their corporate culture — making more innovative and less bureaucratic. The author details some of the changes that have been going on for several years. It’s the vision and leadership of a few people that can determine the fate of hundreds of thousands.
Same thing with “Gamble.” It’s about the complete change that Gen. David Petraeus had to implement to keep Iraq from descending into hell. His plan was not well-received and he had many, many political obstacles to overcome. But he had a vision and a team and they changed the dynamic.
“What Would Google Do?” gives ideas on how to think outside the box — and how Google’s mindset has changed almost everything in society. I am currently trying to build membership for my synagogue. My idea? Lower membership dues and increase the base!
These are ideas and thinking processes that Michael covers in “Flexible Thinker.”
As a small business owner, I have no concept of office politics and trying to influence a huge bureaucracy. However, I constantly have to stay sharp and re-invent myself. I am redoing my website. There is no such thing as resting on your laurels in small business and failure is an option. My business has been steady this year and I am paying my bills. Not an insignificant accomplishment. Reading books is one way to “sharpen the saw” and I recommend it to other entrepreneurs.
Tags: Change Management, competitive advantage, disruptive technology, human resources, Organizational Culture
In order for training to be effective, you need to create new neural pathways. How do you know when there is a new neural pathway? You have an ‘aha’ moment. The ‘aha’ moment indicates, according to scientists and researchers, that the mind has actually changed. The question is – how do we create the ‘ahas’. The answer lies in a study from the University of Michigan that has absolutely nothing to do with brain research. It is a sociology experiment where people were given a flyer on the flu from the Center for Disease Control (“CDC”). What they found was that a significant portion of the people who read the flyer BELIEVED THE EXACT opposite of it within a short time frame and quoted the CDC as their source of information. What the study discovered, as we all know, is that it is very difficult to change a person’s mind and that you cannot argue myths (bad information) with facts (good information) because people only hear what they want to.
So, what does this have to do with training? What a course needs to do is create a by-pass road. In other words, don’t take on a subject head on. Through the use of metaphor and games, you can take a person in a different direction that has nothing to do with the myth (and therefore keeps their defense/neural pathway down) and then lead them in the debrief to make the connection. What happens is that you now have created a by-pass neural pathway/road that, if reinforced in the environment, will eventually overtake the myth and allow the transfer of knowledge.
Tags: aha moment, Center for Disease Control, neural pathways, University of Michigan, Washington Post
The thing about advice is that when it is not asked for, it is often not sought. Virginia Satir, the noted therapist and author of the groundbreaking book Peoplemaking (btw, it was the booked that coined the term ‘dysfunctional’) noted that there are words that should be used carefully, especially in combination. Two of the words are you should. When you use that term, even though your intentions are to help the person, it is condescending and takes the person’s power away from them.
Often times people just want somebody to sound off to and you do not have to ‘fix’ their problem. After all, nobody likes a ‘know-it-all’. Most times what the person needs to do is to be be heard and a phrase such as ‘I know that you know what to do.’ or ‘I trust that you will make the best decision’ is what they need to hear. They need reassurance that they can handle the situation and should trust their gut instinct. By lecturing them with ‘you shoulds’ and ‘do this and that’, all you are doing is making them feel small. Think about yourself, how many of you like to be told ‘you should do this and that’ and be lectured. That is one of the secrets of great facilitation. Although you may have the answer, you need to give people the space to find their own answers. Your answers, no matter how smart you are, may not be the right answers for that situation (especially since all situations are different) and if it doesn’t work they will blame you for it. The way to motivate a person is to empower them to find their own path and make their own decisions. Words do matter. Take time to think about how you use them.
Tags: empower, facilitation, How to Influence People, Virginia Satir