Do Whatever It Takes!
Published June 5, 2011 | 
Last year, SUNY was hosting a special program for Colombian government officials. At the last minute, they had a cancellation and asked me if I could fill in and do a presentation on Leadership Challenges in the 21st Century. They agreed to have a translator present to convert my English into Spanish for the audience. I agreed. Then, I followed the Number One Rule that I teach in all our presentation workshops and coaching – BE AUDIENCE DRIVEN.
- I developed content to be valuable for the audience
- I created an organizational structure and style that would allow for interaction, even if there was a language barrier.
- I decided to have the slides translated into Spanish, so while people wait to hear my English translated, they could at least read the words in their language.
- Before I started, I “met my audience”. I knew Spanish was their first language and expected many to also speak some English, allowing them to get something from my speech, if I spoke more slowly, and get the rest from the translator. I discovered that virtually no-one spoke English.
- Recognizing that if the audience and I had to wait for each and every sentence to be translated, that would significantly reduce the impact of the presentation. Since I had learned Spanish many years ago, I asked the audience if they would let me try to present in Spanish, with the translator filling in when I was stuck. Knowing that the technical words were in Spanish on the slides, I figured I could probably cover about half the presentation in a broken and often grammatically incorrect Spanish. The audience overwhelmingly told me “ Go for it”, and I did.
- Turns out I presented almost 90% of the presentation myself – and built a terrific rapport with the audience (and received compliments later).
At Presentation Excellence, and all the other companies with which I’m involved, our approach is to do “whatever it takes” to meet the client’s needs if possible. A partner once gave a client a fresh shirt he happened to be carrying for an afternoon investor meeting when an accident spoiled the one he was wearing. Good thing I took all those years of Spanish many years ago!
May all your presentations be excellent!
Are You Perfect?
Published May 9, 2011 | If you’re like most people I know, you’re not perfect – and therefore susceptible to the common causes of failure.
In business strategy and leadership courses, we often focus on Best Practices to help guide students. Some courses now also focus on the flip-side: why leaders commit key errors. For instance, Confronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Get Things Right, includes a chapter on “The Six Habits of Highly Unrealistic Leaders”. I thought I’d share it with you.
According to Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan there are six common causes of failure to confront changing realities. I add a seventh:
- Filtered information. Given the increasing complexity of life and the overwhelming amount of information available, filters help us avoid overload. But in doing so, key information challenging basic assumptions may not get through.
- Selective hearing. As humans, we do the same thing: we filter the information to which we attend and often seek information to corroborate our initial decisions
- Wishful thinking. In a world of complexity, doubt and uncertainty, people sometimes resort to wishful thinking. The Bay of Pigs fiasco of 1962 is an example.
- Fear. Facing uncertainty and the unknown, Kahneman and his fellow Nobel prize economists proved that people prefer to avoid losses than seek out gains.
- Emotional overinvestment. Adopting new behaviors and attitudes means giving up older ones; when people are emotionally overinvested, they downgrade the logic of the argument in order to resist change.
- Unrealistic expectations of capital markets. Capital markets focus on quarterly changes, even though true changes, such as a product branding or business development effort can take much longer.
- Inertia. Human nature, like the real-world, resists change. Once we’re comfortable with what exists, it’s hard to recognize that change may be essential. Think of all the companies that were successfully making a nice profit on products (e.g., floppy disk, buggy-whips and netbooks) while other companies were building new products (flash-memory, cars and ipads).
One of the reasons I agreed to chair a CEO group for Vistage, is that the 12+ members of a typical group know that their job is to provide each other with:
- Objective perceptions when a member is falling into one of these traps
- Creative new solutions to overcome business challenges
- Accountability for taking steps necessary to get quality information, avoiding these psychological traps.
My CEO group, which calls itself the Game Changers, is especially focused on avoiding these causes of failure and facilitating adoption of best practices. If you’re in NYC and want to join, feel free to contact me.
How Are You Handling Complexity?
Published April 28, 2011 | I’d like to share with you some of the findings from IBM’s recent study, Capitalizing on Complexity: insights from the Global Chief Executive Officer Study. These are topics that all leaders should be addressing.
IBM’s study is based on face-to-face conversations with 1,541 CEOs general managers and senior public sector leaders worldwide. The research is part of a bi-annual study they’ve conducted over the last several years. The findings are profound and similar to many of the conversations I have with leaders. Let me share some highlights.
Traditionally, when asked how they respond to a competitive and economic environment unlike anything that has come before, these leaders have traditionally reported that “coping with change” was their most pressing challenge.
In 2010, the conversations identified a new primary challenge: complexity. CEOs reported that they operate in a world that is substantially more volatile, uncertain and complex. Incremental changes, many believe, are no longer sufficient.
Primary findings include:
• Today’s complexity is expected to rise; 79% anticipate greater complexity ahead. CEOs expect continued disruption in one form or the other. Increasingly interconnected economics, enterprises, societies and governments give rise to vast new opportunities. Significantly, more than half reported that they feel ill-prepared for today’s more complex environment.
• Creativity is the most important leadership quality. The standout CEOs practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organizations. These leaders expect to made deeper model changes to realize their strategies. To succeed, they take more calculated risks, find new ideas and keep innovating in how they lead and communicate. They recognize that continuous change is the norm. They avoid the old command-and-control style of leadership. 58% prefer to persuade and influence compared to just 17% that tend toward command and control.
• The most successful organizations co-create products and services with customers and integrate customers into core processes. They establish an unprecedented level of focus on customer, looking at customer satisfaction and other customer value metrics. They adopt new channels to engage and stay in tune with customers, and by drawing more insights from available data, successful CEOs make customer intimacy their number-one priority.
• Better performers manage complexity on behalf of their organizations, customers and partners. By simplifying operations and products and increasing dexterity to change the way they work, access resources and enter markets. Dexterous CEOs expect 20% more future revenue to come from new sources. The dexterous group was 19% more likely to view creativity as a top leadership quality.
What do you think? I look forward to discussing these issues with you – as part of my blog @ jerrycahn.com, at our Vistage New York CEO groups, and in future Presentation Excellence webinars.
How the internet changes relationships?
Published January 2, 2011 | First, welcome to the new year!. May it be filled with good health, happiness, and the realization of your dreams.
Second, I’ve been planning on starting a blog for quite some time, to share with you the many things I discuss with colleagues, clients, writers/editors, students, association and corporate audiences, interns, etc., and there’s no better time than the start of a new year. So, here goes. I look forward to many insightful conversations!
Someone recently asked me, “How has the Internet changed relationships?” We brainstormed on the many ways the Internet is changing our lives and how we communicate with one another, and considered what future implications and directions might be. As with all technologies, it’s not all good or bad; the issue is how do we harness the trends to improve our lives.
Thus, the issue is; What’s changing from a psychological, social and business perspective?
Here are a few trends I’ve noticed.
1. We’re always connected. On the positive side, it’s now possible to stay in touch with people with whom you want to be connected. You can monitor and communicate with aging parents and children. It’s easier now to reach out and converse with a friend who may live half-way around the world as well as your local group of friends. Portable devices allow is to access news, opinions, advertisements, music, op-eds etc., anywhere and anytime. On the negative side, we’re losing some of the quiet time or “slack” in our routine; our sphere of “personal privacy” is shrinking as our purchases, responses, comments reveal aspects of our lives.
2. Our access to information has skyrocketed. We can access facts, statistics, definitions, photos, movies, opinions (blogs),news, lesson-plans, company descriptions, resumes, medical information, etc., within seconds. Ignorance is no longer an excuse.
3. Quality of care, such as health care, is increasing exponentially with increased access of medical records, second opinions and long-distance medical advice, monitoring of vital signs, and new methods of cost-controls.
4. People are relating directly with institutions, cutting out the middle “middle-men”. For instance, organizational control of information is giving way to social media’s empowerment of individuals for civic journalism (blogs), people’s discontent and resistance to governments (Twitter and Facebook) and whistle-blowing. People are taking on greater responsibilities for their lives as they interact directly through on-line banking, investing and purchasing.
Which of these issues are most relevant to you? How the internet is changing your relationships and others? As the internet’s role in our lives continues to increase, what other transformations should we expect?
Someone once said that the best way to predict the future is to create it. So, let’s get busy!
Jerry
Posted in Internet, Leadership, Personal Improvement, Psychology | 
Business, commerce, communication, Internet, leadership, relationships | 
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