Category Archives: Office Workflow and Equipment

Risk It! The Better Way Mentality

Every progressive effort starts with a step toward change and a holy dissatisfaction with status quo.

Phil:3:13: Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

 A winner …says, “There is a better way.”.

training

 A loser…. says, “That is the way it has always been done around here.”

Philippians 4:13: I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.

 Life is full of opportunities to continue to do the same things.  One man defined insanity this way: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  Expectations, persistence of others, voices from the past, and other forces impugn on our ability to think new, creative thoughts about what we do.

How do you get into the “better way” mentality?  A favorite saying of mine is, “If it ain’t broke, break it.”  What?  Don’t you mean, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”   No, I meant what I wrote.  “If it ain’t broke, break it.”   Many times we build traditional barriers around an activity structured on preference and our limited understanding at the time.  A man displayed curiousity about the way his wife cooked a roast beef.  She would always cut the ends off.  Thinking there must be a great culinary secret to this method he asked her why.  “I don’t know,” she replied, “my mother taught me that way.”  Pressed for information on the private process he went to her mother.    “I don’t know,” she replied, “my mother taught me that way.”  Perplexed he drove to the matron of the family’s home and asked again.  “Oh,” she quickly responded, “my roasting pan was too short to hold the full roast.”

Most processes need to be repaired regularly.  Now, you don’t want to tear up a good thing, so there are many other rules of change and improvement like: Always give a change time to go through the curve of lagging productivity until people learn the new way and become adept before implementing the next change. AND  Any change will be resisted in strength in direct proportion to its’ potential for improvement.

Life is full of processes and a “better way” mentality will protect you from foolish failure.  A computer tech went out to resolve a problem one day in an executive secretary’s office.  Seemed that every time she printed a letter she first had to print all the letters she had ever printed.   It took an half a box of paper to print a letter!  The cost and time of doing her job that way finally overcame her embarrassment and she asked for help.  The fix was simple.  She was simply doing what she had been shown.  Open a file, go to the end, type the letter, print it.  Problem was she had only be given one file name and all the letters since she began her job were in one file that she printed each time according to explicit instructions.  Absurd?  Real.  Fortune 500 company.  Executive secretary doing something that needed to be broken.

What about the way we converse with others?  What about how we walk into a meeting?  What about how we greet our friends?  Are those processes that could use some “better way” mentality?

Jesus broke the mold for some in the way they treated their parents in a story related in Matthew 15.  God gave a principle.  Honor your fathers and mothers.  They made a rule that discluded them conveniently.  Tradition overruled wisdom and principle, and Jesus saw through the smoke.   Matt 15:6:  Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12: 1-2  NIV.

Principle is principle is principle.  Relationships, work issues, projects, and hobbies all present problems.  When you allow others to help in the process, you prosper quicker.  Sometimes they have the solution you need.  Always, Jesus has the solution you need.

Take Inventory

Where do you have a process, a way of doing things that really could use some improvement by being broken?

Are you ready to give up personal preferences and do what it takes to “break it and make it better” ?

Can you think of a scripture to apply that can help you into “better way” mentality?

Make Application

Write what you are going to specifically do in the next 30 days about this.

Pray To Be Changeable

Father, quicken my mind and heart.  Life is full of processes.  You know the one that needs breaking and bettering at this moment.  God, I can get so confused with all of the items in life.  What item can I work on today?  What am I doing that really does more damage than good?  Where can I get a lift seeing you touch a new area of my life and give me a creative fresh approach?  Cleanse my thinking, Lord.  Jesus, be my wisdom, be my source, be my life giver.  Holy Spirit release the fresh wind of Your brooding.  Brood over my thoughts and bring order to their chaos that I might see clearly what You want to create.

The Three Hats Of A Mature Manager – Syncing Yourself For The Next Step

Don’t read this if you are under 35.  It won’t make much sense.  Then again, if you read and understand it, you can improve your ability to work well with mature managers.

Professionals are intentionally developed.  Through involvement in projects and initiatives and departments through your career, the best of who you are is evident.  There is a skill to gaining enjoyment and value out of who you are.  There is an art to applying that value to your daily business endeavors.  You can be the best you, doing the most fit assignments and have a great amount of fun.  Or not.  Choose. Make sure you consider your Three Hats before you choose.  Be you.

A friend reminded me that people focus on your weaknesses because they struggle with allowing your strengths.   People are like that.  They pick at what they don’t understand in the most negative ways.   But you don’t have to let pickiness impact your confidence and connection.  You just need to work on your Three Hats.

 This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man  

William Shakespeare

Three Fields of Play

First, let’s take a look at three fields of play.  Then we can talk about the Three Hats.

Play to your strength.  You know this.  Do what you do best.  But, you need to really know what that is.  Strength can be as limiting as weakness if not tamed.  A hard-nosed, goal-driven executive can find herself isolated by dwelling too strong on this strength.   Soften the edges of your game. Don’t dominate the play, just lead with excellence. People can mistake strength for rigidity.  That won’t help you or others.

Cover your weakness.  Of course you have them.  You’ve found them haunting you every turn of your career.   Six courses of style management can’t change these core items of who you are.  As a manager, I’ve always had to focus hard on listening.  Why?  I’m 50+% deaf since birth. So, I arrange my office for optimum face to face contact and limit noise interference.  People are usually amazed when I tell them about my limitation as I’ve mastered masking through sitting in middle spots in conferences and making sure I get directly across from those I expect to be key stakeholders in any meeting.  What is yours?  Find a cover.  Bad note taker?  Make sure a good one gets that assignment in every meeting.   Take double notes.  Find  a cover.

Build disciplines.  There are some skills that just have to be at a good level whether they are a weakness or not in your specific regimen.  Know what they are and find a way to strengthen them.  It is not an option to be weak in an area that must be strong.  Sorry, it is tough, but you need to fix it.  If promptness is hard for you, you must repair.  If attentiveness is hard for you, you must repair.  You must.

Three Hats

So what the heck am I talking about, Three Hats?   Each of us over time discovers from 3-5 core areas of expertise.  For me it is operational excellence, communication, and people development.  After working multiple companies in multiple industries, these items just keep coming back on top.  Sure, I have many skills and abilities like project management and administration and meeting management and facilitating brainstorming,, and marketing, and sales, and, and, and… But what are the Three Hats that never come off no matter what I am doing?  Find yours.  Know them.  Develop.

Hat One:  This is your core passion.  When you get up in the morning, what gets you started?  At the end of the day, what are you thinking?  What is that core?  For me?  People development.  I love to see people grow.

Hat Two:  This is your core performance.  Okay, when you example “velocity”, where does it happen.  Velocity is the ability to do the right thing at the right time that advances you and everyone around you and the business.  For me?  Operational excellence.  Seeing how to adjust an operation to perform the charter is a natural for me and advances the organization.

Hat Three: This is the core producer.  This is the trait that makes the other two shine.  What is it that you do so well that enables core performance and passion to be energized?  This is all about ‘vitality’.  This puts energy into the performance and keeps you engaged long after others would give up.  This secret brings it all together for you.  I love encouraging with communication and clarifying with communication and setting vision with communication.  Communication enables my passion and let’s others walk along with operations.

When your Three Hats are working well they become one hat.  The brim, the bill, and the band form one unit for others to see and appreciate.  That maturity developed and seen in you can be applied to your next career steps in the position you have or the one you are getting ready to have.  Just make sure the hat fits before you engage.

Want To Develop Yourself and Your Business?

Lead with Solutions: Five Key Phrases To Lead

There is power in your words, Leader.

Leaders lead.  We lead with our words, our actions, our intent, and our example.

Leaders lead.  Leading flows from the inner core of a leader outward for followers to follow.  Wisdom literature intrigues and builds me.  Two principles that regurgitate in my meditative time apply here.

  1. What is in your heart comes out your mouth.
  2. Words carry life or death.

Uncomfortable as that may be for some, it is life and energy for leaders.  Those that deny they are being led are fools looking for a place to fail.  Those that accept they are both being led and leading others have matured to a grasp of reality needed for contentedness and success.  Watching words is a key necessity of leadership.

One of the ways leaders lead is with the entry words they use in conversations and meetings and personal engagements.  So let’s look at five phrases that lead well and lead to impact and influence.

How can we lead effectively with our entry words?

Lead #1: How do you feel about this situation?  Leaders fail many times by leading with precooked answers.  Try leading with a question.  The conversation is headed a positive direction based on your quick and thoughtful lead.  Watch out for asking how people think.  That will get you 80% less response than asking them how they feel.  They will tell you what they think in response to asking them how they feel.  For the most part, people are less threatened when asked how they feel than asked how they think.

Lead #2: There could be some amazing benefit to this approach.  You just opened the other person or group up to a positive view of what follows.  Yet, you have not committed anyone to a position of yes or no.  The engagement is now open to include a description of the issue being addressed, but with an expectation of a positive outcome.  Lead on.

Lead #3: What worries you most about our issue?  Wow.  You just posed an emotional tie to the others in conversation.  It is not someone else’s issue, but our issue.  You’ve entered into a supportive stakeholder position and communicated you will be there to help work through the blips.  At the same time, you gave the other person influence in the next steps.

Lead #4: Have you considered a possibility of option X?  This is an enticing lead that suggests a solution without forcing compliance.  Leadership contains an element of power along with authority.  By opening with consideration of an option, meaning there are other options, you give power to the others in the conversation.  It can be a big win when working with a strong leader.  Some leaders place themselves in defensive stance over a position they have taken in the past.  You just graced them with a way out that saves face for them and could bring them better success than a present entrenched option.

Lead #5: Having considered many options, here is one I’d like to bring to the table for discussion.  Okay, this is a lead based on research prior to this moment.   You’ve opened the discussion to include consideration of other options and problem barbs and even rabbit trails.  It is an empowering position for all included.  Sometimes an entire room will just go quiet at this point and let you lead forward.  Be ready for that.  After all, you are a leader.

Summary:  Notice none of these leads starts with the issue at hand.  All of these communicate co-ownership of the issue and the solution and confidence in a positive outcome.  Avoid leading with the issue.  My days are full of conversations that start, “Phil, I have a problem.”  That is a position of weakness.  Sometimes the individual just wants to discuss their ideas.  Many times they are looking to offload the problem and responsibility.  Take responsibility by leading into a solution.  Leading with the solution in today’s environment can be considered pushy and too strong.  Lead with compassion and listening and strength with some key phraseology that reveals intent to engage along with intelligence and ownership.  Lead on, Leader.

Excellence Starts Here! Three Tips For Top Performance. Engaging Ingenuity.

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These two gentlemen represent a great event in a production shop.  What really is the beginning of such powerful events?  Oh, the event?  The team had kept key equipment up and running and productive for 30 days with no vendor calls.  Amazing.  Especially considering the fact that prior to this the equipment required calls every 2-3 days for many years.  They are holding an award for the historic event.  Now, back to the question.  What really is the beginning of such powerful events?

Think about why you need these events?  A friend used to call them “Big Days”.  Big Days build strength in an organization, overcome defiant obstacles, and release energy of the team in a positive manner that is brooding in a negative manner.  For those reasons alone, you need to engage the next three points.

One: Get dissatisfied.  Yes, that is the beginning of all great change.  If you are comfortable and content, change is a threat.  You must engage vision for the future with passion and be dissatisfied with the status quo.

Two:  Spread your dissatisfaction.  Now, you don’t need to get people upset over nothing.  But if the people you are serving can’t get their jobs done or their product delivered or their services received on time, you need to get some partners in your dissatisfaction.  Other managers, co-workers, staff, key customers, executives and others probably are already dissatisfied.  Let them know you understand and listen to their view points.

Three:  This is where real change starts.  Pick a key point over which everyone is dissatisfied and attack it with passion and purpose.  Dig for a root cause that will help everyone in the process.  The theory of constraints explains that when you dig out a major point of constraint, you loosen up other constraints to become visible so they can be resolved.  In other words, break the dam!

You will be amazed.  This team went into overdrive for customer satisfaction when they found this one barrier to productivity resolved.  They annihilated this bothersome downtime issue on key machines, developed new procedures for maintaining the equipment, gained independence from the vendor, improved production turnaround times, and improved the entire shop morale.

Just a thought today for those looking to do something good for themselves and those they serve.

Profitable cost reduction in print and communication services.

pyramid

Every executive is tasked with reducing costs and increasing profit.  We can forget.   The press of managing the budget can get tied into just meeting the plan instead of achieving the underlying goals.  An officer has a fiduciary responsibility to increase shareholder equity.  You can’t just “manage the budget”.  It needs to improve impact on the bottom line.

Print services is one of those areas that just seems to take money and not give a return.  That is a shame.  Print services can be such a profit booster, when rightly implemented and attached to corporate initiatives.

Last week my partner and I reviewed two university in-plants.  They were ivy league and state.  In just a few hours we were able to isolate incredible opportunity to both reduce costs and expand profitable services.  You just have to know where to look.

I’ve written quite a lot lately about business plans and new product development.  Those were the subjects taught at GraphExpo and are being reviewed by hundreds of folks daily.  Some of the feedback I get is a need to be able to assess a print services operation and come up with a viable action plan to improve impact on the bottom line.  Too often managers and consultants are looking to survive.  You need to thrive.  There is no reason not to thrive.  The opportunities are amazing.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll explore how to thrive.

There is no reason to just get along.  There is no reason to roll over to conventional strategy of limiting the benefit of your overall communications engine through bad sourcing decisions and coagulation of IT, marketing, and print services.  Where you source your print and communication services is a growth decision not a cost cutting decision.  You can throttle your progress engine by making this decision incorrectly.  Done correctly, you will cut costs, improve service, increase access to effective communications and be a hero.  Done incorrectly, you will cut short term costs and produce blockages in your growth and communications engine and frustrations for marketing and sales and the data miners.  You cannot grow using yesterday’s wisdom in a thriving world of interactive print, direct, indirect, social, online, mobile, and mass virile and viral communications.

Related:

Responsibility and Sustainability

Removing Workflow Constraints

Pain Points

#graphexpo…. new stuff

GraphExpo exposed some new opportunities for In Plant and commercial and hybrid operations.  The print services provider of the moment is fast becoming the communications provider of the future.  There are incredible opportunities.

New opportunities:  More than one spot featured what I will call, “Talking Paper”.  Ricoh featured this and DocuMobi (now loaded on my Android and I hate loading new apps). It is the image that is recognized instead of a barcode.  A good idea if the readers become  integrated I can just use one scan and my device figures out which source I need quickly.  The interactivity of the quick video with documobi is  a blast.  Print with a smile.  In fact, DocuMobi was using Direct Smile in the mix.

Next up was a great development.  More than one press manufacturer had mixed roll paper feed into multiple option feeders.  How I wish I had this six years ago when 75% of the paper I was using was one type. The inability to mix roll and cut sheet is frustrating for most shops. Kudos to the front end company that is making this possible.  I did not delve deep enough to know which one it is.

Social interaction. Not social media. Social social.  IPMA and Print Media Centr both had open booths.  The playability at the PrinterVerse was oustanding.  What a refreshing step away from the vendor hawk areas.  Vendors take note.  Provide a place where no sales people are allowed and people can just enjoy.  One of my great friends in life is Emerson.  No, they have nothing to do with printing or communications.  They provide power systems.  Every once in a while they provide a few days in a non typical convention town where only their engineers are communicating with customers.  They mix education on trends and build great relationships.  Kudos, GASC.

More fun?  Ricoh gets the all out award for creative display.  That town center was a blast. I wish I had four hours just to walk around.  I sure hope you caught it on pictures so I can redo a virtual tour with easy drill down into the shop windows.  Wow.

As Gomer would say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise!”  Right in the middle of Konica Minolta is EngageIT.  I love EasyPurl and Mindfire and InfusionSoft and Interlinkone and Xmpie, and, and… anyone who mixes up the channels in easier ways for printers.  This product looks to be a game changer.  Written by a gaming ad agency, it has simple abilities to make it happen based on realistice patterns of interactivity.  And you  don’t need rocket scientists in your shop to make it work.

In Plant education was a phenom.  Much thanks to GraphExpo for courting this audience that makes up a bigger and bigger portion of the industry.  Sorry commercial guys, if you don’t learn how to in plant, you are going to go away.  More and more companies get it.  The digital revolution brings ability for volume, quality, variability and impact in smaller and smaller and more affordable packages.  The need for mass volumes and monster equipment is waning.  Companies that have never thought about In Plant operations will start thinking. Those that have them have begun serving others.   The education options were superb and dead on.  The In Plant folks had fun, learned, and were exposed to new possibilities. I talked to many of them.  They are ready to grow and take a bigger portion of the market.

That’s enough for today.  Just a little reporting on the fun side.

You are not who you are. It just looks that way.

The first step to change is a holy dissastisfaction with the present state.

You are not what you have done or what you are doing.  You are what you’ve become and where you are going.

Like that?  Makes sense to me.  Where are you going?  What have you become?

Do you like the answer to both of those questions?   So many times we settle for status quo because of what we have experienced and then work to keep adding to blanked existences and shop patterns and sales attempts that are working to a degree, but never seem to break through to the level of performance we would like.   That is one heck of a long sentence.  Mull on it for a minute.

We settle for status quo.

We get comfortable with prior experience.

We labor at the common and comfortable.

Eventually it is dull and boring and feels like a blank.

Our shops become patterned for problems.

We like the problems with which we are familiar.  We know how to fix them.

Our sales are structured and predictable.

The circle remains unbroken.

Deep inside, we yearn for a new level of productivity.  We want to grow.

We want to become more than we have become.

We want to go where we have never gone.

Familiar?

Remember T. S. Seisel?  Of course you do.  He is American and world history.  As a young man his political cartoons graced many key magazines.  His 15 years of ad work for Standard Oil helped build the company.  Working with Frank Capra, he produced animated training films for soldiers of WWII.  Still don’t remember him?  That was the majority of his life.

Oh, the middle most S?  Seuss.  Dr. Seuss.

The first book was rejected 27 times.  At the time he was a famous cartoonist.  Rejected.  What had become of him?

Then the Cat in the Hat project just seemed to expose a different man than any had ever met.  Over the years, he had become and was becoming someone much different.  Where he was going was an unknown until that book well into his career. 

Every one of us has that potential in every part of what we do.  So many organizations settle for mediocrity.  The incredible potential bottled in their staff just sits and stews all the way to retirement.  It gets so bad, companies begin giving away the mature workers because the organization has doomed them to zombism through saying, “No”, to creative becoming idea after powerful results changing idea.  The source of great ingenuity and innovation that resides in the years of wisdom and experience is put aside for youthful energy who have yet to become much of anything.  They will.  Given time, we all do.  Most likely they will become zombies like their predecessors.

Seisel broke mode.  It was a persistent and purposeful pursuit inside of him that broke mold.  He just refused to quit growing and becoming.

You have systems of work, opportunities for new product, and development of people ahead of you.  What can you become?  Where can you go?

Let’s find out together.

images:

http://clatl.com/imager/visual-art-dr-seuss-goes-to-war/b/original/1433174/eb2b/seedo2-1_44.jpg

http://www.virginmedia.com/images/Dr.Seuss_431x276.jpg