Attitude at Altitude: A Lesson

This past weekend, I traveled out of town with one of my daughters for a soccer tournament.  The tournament was in South Lake Tahoe (on the border between California and Nevada) and we were about 6300 feet above sea level (almost 2km elevation).  My daughter's team is used to practicing and playing in Oregon, at about 50 feet above sea level (about 15 meters ) elevation.  

When you aren't accustomed to it, physical activity at that altitude is very challenging.  For example, I went for a hike up into the mountains after we arrived, and it was much more difficult than I expected due to the thinner atmosphere at that altitude. 

Attitude at Altitude

The reason for the title of this post:  The girls' coach never mentioned anything about the altitude to the girls on the team, and asked the parents not to say anything.  The girls played their hearts out the whole weekend, and never complained.  They played amazingly well, and came in second in the tournament (they lost on penalty kicks in the championship game).

I believe if we'd have told them something about how the altitude  would affect their performance, they wouldn't have done as well.  In other words, we didn't give them the data that would mess with their attitudes, so their attitudes weren't affected. 

After reflecting on it, I think the coach did exactly the right thing.  Having that information wouldn't have changed their circumstances one bit - they'd still have to play at a higher altitude, compete with the same teams, and deal with the same physical effects of their environment. Knowing about the difference in atmosphere wouldn't have made a bit of difference in their situation, but it could have affected their attitudes or confidence dramatically. 

How Are We Affecting Our Teams With Our Data? 

This weekend got me thinking about how the information I choose to communicate might be affecting the teams I "coach" or work with - am I giving them information that could cause them to perform poorly?  Is the information I communicate to them something they can control or affect? Or am I giving them the data to sabotage their own performance.

I now want to be more conscious of how I communicate with my own teams at work, and try to be conscious of how my message may affect their performance in detrimental ways.   If I mess up their attitude by causing them to worry about things beyond their control, I could cause us all to lose the game.

'Trump' Your Competitors: 4 Business Lessons Learned From "The Apprentice"

The harder you work the, "luckier" you get. That's an interesting statement. If you think about it, the harder you work, the more chances you have to be successful, so, in turn, you feel "lucky." On "The Apprentice," Donald Trump has a lot to say. His business advice is generally sound, honest and can help anyone succeed if they are willing to follow it. Actually, not just follow it but take the bull by the horns and charge forward.

Trump is a multi-billionaire because he is knowledgeable and bold. He's an educator and - above all - he's a great showman. Whether you love him or hate him, he knows what he's doing and he is a champion, when it comes to business (I wouldn't ask for his advice on hair styles, but business is another matter). Here are a few business tips to help you triumph in your own world and "trump" your competitors.

Be Coachable

Separate yourself from the "pack" to stand out and get ahead, suggests Trump in an NBC interview. The humility in accepting the fact there might be a better way to do a certain task, defines you as a person. It shows you want to improve and know that no one (even yourself) is perfect. By allowing leaders to coach you in business, you actively take responsibility for improving your life and increasing your knowledge. Some people consider being humble to be a key attributes of a successful human being.

Admitting faults can be hard; however, the grace you show in turning constructive criticism into opportunity keeps you humble. Being coachable can take practice and discipline. Getting rid of a negative, sour, defensive attitude can completely change your direction.

Money Isn't the Primary Goal

Don't get me wrong - money sure is nice when you get it. However, the key to making money is not letting it be the reason for your actions. Ask yourself, what happens when you attain the amount you are going for? You may hit a ceiling and could begin to make bad decisions and slack on your business practices. Stick to the rules of saving by separately budgeting your business and personal finances.  Don't be afraid to get creative with financing, either.  If you're a small business owner, you can solidify your credit with an American Express cash flow card, for example.

While Trump is known to say money is a scorecard you can use to gauge how well you and your company are doing, it should not be your driving force. Keep in mind you are always wanting to move toward something.

A good driving force? Strive to become a better version of yourself.  Personally, learning new things, helping others and solving interesting problems is a big motivator for me - I've just managed to find ways to make money by doign that.

Communication is the Relationship

Communicate effectively. Learn to express yourself in a positive manner and avoid attacking people or "going negative." Go into challenges asking questions and don't assume it is someone's fault; there could be sound explanations for happenings. Also, while you are in it to win it, it often takes teamwork to prevail. In teamwork, communication can make or break you. "The Apprentice" is all about working together. Strive to be the respected leader of the pack.

Transparency and genuine communication is also important - that is how you build trust with others.  That isn't to say diplomacy isn't necessary, but open communications go a long way toward building stronger relationships with others.

Create a Personal Brand

Because business is an "every man for himself/every woman for herself" enterprise (according to Trump), it's important to know your audience and for them to know you. A big part of confidence and success relies on your personal brand. How do you want others to perceive you? While first impressions are essential in building positive relationships, you must continue to impress and stimulate your audience's perception of you.

A good guideline I've heard is to "continually do the things you want to be known for."  This is a key when creating your personal brand, which means focus is important.  Decide the top 5 (or so) things you want to be known for and figure out the things you need to do to demonstrate and be known for them - make it a habit and your personal brand will develop.

Your Best Just Got Better - A Review

I've been reading Jason Womack's book, "Your Best Just Got Better," on my Kindle for the past week or so.  I just finished it and the verdict is in: It is so well done!

I met Jason a few years ago when he still worked for the David Allen Company, and have been impressed with his perspective from day one, particularly his ability to provide insightful suggestions to improve your skills no matter what your current situation.

Expand your perspective to improve your outcomes

This book is very interesting, practical, energizing and I highly recommend it.  Throughout, Jason offers hands-on exercises to get you into a more active mode of driving your own future.  I read the book cover-to-cover, but now I am planning to go back and conduct the exercises step-by-step (I skipped some exercises because I was on planes, or my energy / attention levels weren't where they needed to be) because I can see just how powerful they can be.

One pervasive theme throughout the book is to think beyond your "normal" perspective so you can stretch your goals, drive different and better effort, and get more assertive in pushing your life where you want it to go.  For example, the book begins with an interesting visioning exercise called "Your Ideal Day," which gets you to begin imagining how things could be if you had a magic wand.  If you want a taste of this, be sure and check out Jason's web site for a sample, along with a contest that goes through the end of 2012.

One of the things I like about Jason is that he uses a lot of models and constructs that make sense to me (I'm big on finding models that I can apply in different situations.  For example, I like the I.D.E.A. model that shows up throughout the book:

I: Identify a very specific area you want to improve. Focus your attention on making the best better in one area of your life, and clarify what that will look like when you get there.

D: Develop strategies to engage in specific actions and techniques to direct your professional improvement and personal development. Acknowledge the process—remember, you’re just getting started! An important aspect is that the most sustainable changes people tend to make usually start small, are repeated with consistency, and often result in a payoff greater than anyone could have hoped.

E: Experiment by planning for and taking actions that generate bursts of momentum. Experimenting gives you the freedom to stop at any time to try something new. It also provides a more objective framework so that you can determine whether you should stop or continue moving forward. When you take actions to make your best better, it continues to get better.

A: Assess the value the effort has created. Here is the question I consistently ask myself, my friends, my family, even my clients: “Is what you’re doing worth the effort?”

Womack, Jason W. (2012-01-05). Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More (p. 5). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

 Shape your own outcomes

Jason also provides some great advice in shaping the results you get in your life - one involves adjusting the words you use to create more positive, future-oriented results; the other involves taking inventory of the people you hang out with, and distancing yourself from those that have a negative or counter-productive influence on you.  Truly great advice.

You'll find some familiar concepts (including some I've written about in the past, like time audits) and they're always presented with solid step-by-step methods to help you apply the concepts.  For example, you'll find some great techniques for more effective "chunking" (aka time boxing) your day to get more out of each 15-minute block in your day.  You'll also find good techniques to track how you're doing on your goals, as well as how well you're using your energy to get there.As someone who's always looking for ways to become more productive, I eat this stuff up.  

This book is that it isn't just about getting more done, Jason also coaches you on methods you can use to make more money - that's something we can all use, particularly in this economy.  And Jason's advice on how to build and leverage your network (business, social, etc) is excellent.  Very cool.

A great book for "now"

Lately, I've noticed that a lot of people I know are taking hard looks at their lives - either to increase their success, make more money, or fig our out what's next for them.  If that sounds like you, this book is perfect for you right now, and I encourage you to pick up a copy and get started going through the exercises.

If you aren't sure, or you want to get a feel for Jason's writing style, why not start with a free e-book from him called, "7 Keys To A More Productive Day," from Jason Womack's web site.

If you're convinced and ready to jump in, grab a copy of "Your Best Just Got Better," today.  By the way - I think this book will be a great gift for some recent graduates I know, as well as great gifts this holiday season for some of my good friends.

5 Ways Taking Classes Helps Improve My Skills

This week I was reminded of a great way to improve your skills:  hands on practice in a well-organized workshop or training program.  In my case, I took some "boot camp" courses in computer hacking at a security conference to brush up on my skills and learn about new tools.  I felt like I was getting rusty and wanted a refresher.  Boy, was it fun!  [Note: I don't hack things for malicious reasons - I help people secure things for a living, and a strong defense requires a deep knowledge of how the attackers will come at you.]

I try to keep up with things from online sources (blogs, discussion boards, etc.) but it is difficult to internalize some of this without sitting at the keyboard and trying some things.  In this regard, the workshops I was in had a few key advantages:

Access to experts who can help you learn

I am generally good at solving problems because I have a good mental process for figuring things out.  However, sometimes I know what questions to ask but not how to get the answers.  This happened a lot in my class.  

One of the instructors set the stage nicely for this by saying, "I won't tell you the answer, but if you ask me the right question I will tell you how to get the answer."  Essentially, he was testing for whether or not we grasped the concepts behind the problems we were trying to solve; if we understood well enough to formulate the right question, he would point us to the right tools, resources, or processes for us to research how to get the answer we were looking for.

Access to others with different approaches

Another aspect of the classes that I liked was how we compared solutions and approaches after each challenge.  Each student would independently solve the problems, then we'd talk through how we got to the solution at the end.  I learned a bunch of techniques from other people that helped me improve my own skills - in other words, when I saw a method that worked better than my approach I added it to my arsenal.

We also learned about tools and tricks to make things easier - typically leveraging a proven process, or automation, or resources we didn't know about before the classes.

A safe environment to try new things

We were all in the classes to learn new things, so there was no stigma attached to making mistakes, and no shame in asking for help.  

Also, the people who conducted the classes provided us with a fantastic assortment of systems to hack, each with different operating systems, different vulnerabilities, different kinds of target "prizes," etc.  This is very difficult to come by in the real world unless you have a pretty sophisticated lab setup. It felt kind of like a playground.

Competition fuels the fire

In a lot of classes, there are competitive exercises intermingled with the learning exercises.  My classes were no exception - we had several "capture the flag" scenarios that allowed us to compete with each other to see who could achieve the goal first.  This was a lot of fun, as it forced us to apply the things we'd been learning but put some time constraints on us.  That made it feel much more real, and not so academic.

Feed the thirst for knowledge

The other side effect?  I now want to learn even more about the topics I worked on in class.  I have a long list of things that I touched on in class, but want to research more deeply.  And I want to check out a few training classes that can help me get there faster.

There you have it - 5 ways classes helped me improve my skills.  There are other benefits (met some great people, got CPE credits, etc.) but these are the ones that will keep me coming back.  What about you?  Have you taken a course lately?  It might be a good way to get you into a new mode of learning and improve your skills.

"Brand Real" - does your brand pass the test?

Laurence Vincent's book, "Brand Real," is all about brands and brand loyalty.  At first, I was wondering how much of it would apply to me - after all, I'm more of a technical guy, and I'm not in charge of a big brand.  I found that there were actually a lot of relevant take-aways from this book that I could apply in my daily life.

"Brand Real" not only helped me understand what it takes to build a good brand, it also helped me think differently about some of the brands I have a fondness for (and some that I don't), in that it has a deep discussion about why leading brands create loyalty within its customer base.  In essence, this book spends a lot of time on analyzing brands that have become "sticky" based on what they do and not just whether they have a cool name or an exciting logo.

At its core, this book's discussion of "brand" reminds me of the maxim, "You become know for that which you consistently do."

Lots of case studies

I love learning by examples and through story-telling, so I was pleased to see that this book has a lot of real-world examples to illustrate some of its concepts.  These stories range from the personal, such as a discussion between the author and his son illustrating how superficially we think of the notion of a "brand;" and corporate-oriented stories, such as how The Gap triggered a huge backlash amongst its customers when it tried to change its logo.

Other examples feature Apple, Starbucks, and other household names, as well as case studies about lesser-known (but perhaps even more informative) organizations like Washington Federal.

Thinking of brands as living things

One thing that stuck with me in this book was discussed in a chapter called, "Expressing the Promise."  The author describes how researchers Robert McRae and Paul T. Costa, Jr. found that all people could be measured based on the degree to which they possessed 5 key characteristics:

• Neuroticism
• Extroversion
• Openness
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness

Likewise, Vincent posits that brands can be measured along 5 similar axes - think of them as the "personality of the brand":

• Sincerity
• Excitement
• Competence
• Sophistication
• Ruggedness

These attributes play a key role in measuring, defining, and even redefining your brand.  In "Brand Real," Vincent discusses how to use these to develop your messaging strategy, as well as how to "test" your messages to determine whether they are congruent with how your brand behaves.  Then, you can use these anchors to map what you say, what your brand does, and who you're talking to (your audience or customers) to make sure things all hang together in a credible way.

The third rail of brand

In much the same way that the third rail on a subway system provides the power that enables the train to move, Vincent talks about what it takes to connect your brand to the heart - the emotional side - of you customers, which is really the key in making a brand that customers feel passionate about (and loyal to).  These are the brands that go beyond functional products and capabilities, and move into something that makes embeds itself in the lives of its customers to create strong, emotional loyalty.  I think of brands like Apple, Nike, and Coca Cola when I think of this kind of brand.

I'm just touching the surface of the depth of this book, as it relates to brand.  I think all of the concepts apply to anyone involved in branding and company reputation, but I was surprised at how many of the concepts can apply to our personal brands.  I can see how many of these concepts could be used to improve your perceived value at work, home, organizations in which you're involved, etc.

So, if you have any interest in branding and reputation management, check out "Brand Real" -- it is well worth your time.