Leaders with Purpose

This month I read The Heart of Business by Hubert Joly. While he has been in the business world for his whole career, he decided to write this book after he completed his time as CEO of Best Buy. His journey and involvement with many businesses around the world and with many business leaders taught him a great deal about leadership and caused him to evaluate what it really means to be a leader and what type of leader he wanted to be. Let’s take a look at some of the things that are part of what Joly sees as leadership that is necessary for the future we’re heading into.

His experiences have motivated him to be a leader like I talk about frequently: one who places a high importance on the idea of humanity in business (i.e. you can’t forget that your business isn’t a robot business, but made up of people from top to bottom). He presents it as companies have 3 keys: people, business and financials. It starts with people because if a business really wants to be successful in this day and age, especially after all the changes that happened during the pandemic, you have to consider the impact your business has on society as a whole, not just the bottom (financial) line. Profits should be seen not as the end-all-be-all, but rather evidence of how successfully you’re building relationships with the people who buy from you (or the lack thereof regarding your strategy or lack of connection).

As part of that people conversation, the book delves into the evolving world of compensation, motivation and incentives. Even before the pandemic started many people were rethinking what they needed in the way of support from the companies they worked for, and the pandemic only prioritized that question. What it boils down to is what used to work for people doesn’t work for many people these days. The best way to get your team on board and committed to your organization is through respect, honesty, openness, listening, and truly valuing them and their contributions.

I’ll close with Joly’s encouragement about how to be a leader in this day and age: “Be clear about your purpose, the purpose of people around you, and how it connects with the purpose of your company.” Hubert Joly’s career shows that it’s totally possible for leaders who are both starting out and those who have been in the leadership world for a long time can be the leaders that people need today. While some things may return to how they used to be, given that many of the things that came to light during the pandemic only became more clear and focused, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever completely return to how leadership or business used to be. Are you being the leader that your company needs in this day and age with all the changes that have happened and focused interests, needs, perspectives and plans of your people?

The Speed of Success

I was rereading a book for probably the 20th time the other day and it was still just as good as the first time I read it. It always amazes me when that happens! This author has been writing books for over 40 years and apparently is still good at what she does, but these days she’s only publishing 1-2 books each year, which is forever in reader time, especially considering that some authors are able to publish a good (re-readable) book every couple of months. There are so many different aspects of success that we could unpack in all of this, but I want to focus on the time aspect (and for the sake of simplicity I’ll stick with the book publishing example, but this can apply to any success journey you’re on).

First, sometimes it doesn’t matter how long things take, as long as they’re almost always worth it. As long as it doesn’t become a moot point (i.e. you cross the finish line long after people have a need for the product or service), your focus can be more on getting the job done well and providing a real solution to the problem than pumping out sub-par work as fast as you can.

Second, you may be absolutely thrilled to publish a book once a year, while someone else may only feel successful if they publish 4 or 5 books, which means that if you choose to, you’ve got room to grow. I believe we should be growing throughout our lives, and one of the aspects we can grow in is getting faster at doing things. Advances and changes over time can be good or bad, but they always present us with new ways of doing things. It’s up to us to decide if a new way of doing things will help or if it will actually end up taking more time away from our important work (do you really need another app or calendar or can you just go ahead and get it done?).

Third, be open to some flexibility on the time aspect. Schedules can be absolutely fantastic, and they can also be what hurts your chances of success. Sometimes we get faster when we settle into a routine, but sometimes it’s those routines that don’t give us the freedom or creativity we need to really get things done. Life doesn’t work as well around the same rigid schedules that it used to (i.e. working 9-5, working Monday-Friday etc.) because of how quick and transitory so many aspects of our lives are today. So maybe you’re not giving yourself enough time or you’re giving yourself too much time, or you’re not being flexible about when you schedule that time in throughout your day/week/month, or maybe you’re in a season that you’re able to give bigger blocks of time to the work and you know that next month you won’t be able to give as much.

So maybe what you need to do is reconsider the time you’re giving to the work you’re doing. Maybe you’re ready to understand how you use time and learn (or relearn) to better manage your time, and that’s where you should start before you randomly start changing things or trying to grow in ways that you’re really not ready for. But don’t let time be a crutch or a rut when it comes to your success, let it be one of the tools that help you be successful.

Enjoy Our World

Growing up I spent a ton of time outside. Yes we had TV and some computer access back then, but nothing like what we have today. If I wasn’t bike riding or playing in the back yard, I was reading outside. Both of my parents are and one of my grandmothers was huge gardeners (I didn’t get quite the same green thumb although I do try), so of course there was lots of gardening and exploring of the natural world too. It was a huge help to have family members who were so passionate about our natural world, without their influence I’m sure I would have some respect for nature but probably not the same perspective or interest. It also helped that schools were going through a phase when they really encouraged and focused on getting kids outside whenever possible too when I was a kid.

One of the things I wrote about in other blogs and newsletters this week was how important it is to save the planet, yes, but at the same time we need to do a better job of showcasing, highlighting, exploring and celebrating all the cool things that we’re fighting to save. Visiting a zoo, hiking in national parks, pursuing a photography hobby, watching live animal cameras, reading nature books from the library, taking part in a community garden, watching nature documentaries, planting an indoor or outdoor garden, and even cooking with a variety of fresh vegetables are all ways to get to know the world that we’re trying to save and all the cool creatures, plants and natural locations that are worth saving (I know the idea of zoos has gotten a bad rap over the years, but many of them these days are actually a significant part of the conservation efforts around the world).

This all goes back to the discussion we had last weekend about tough questions kids ask. They want to know why we do certain things or why we talk about “saving the planet” and “climate change,” and it can be hard to give answers to those questions that aren’t vague or concepts or influenced by ‘many years’ (which is a really long time in kid years). But when you present them with these creatures they can see with their own eyes and watch how they live, these plants they can touch and work personally on growing, the foods they can see how they go from seed to plant to table, it changes the question from “why…” or “what do you mean…” to “how can I help?” and “how soon can we do that again?”

Maybe that’s the attitude adjustment we need as adults too: that rather than facing and focusing on consequences for all these things, we could have more freedom and opportunities and a healthier relationship between us and our present and future on this planet. We don’t have to conquer the mountain of the care for the earth in one day or one fell swoop, it’s through little changes that most of us can make a positive impact not only on the planet but our lives as well. And it’s through those same little things that can help us teach our kids to both love the earth and care for it for their future and their kid’s future. What are your family’s favorite ways of exploring and celebrating the world?

Leaders for Our Natural World

This month rather than just look at one leader, I thought we’d take a look at a bunch of people who played a role in the conservation and Earth Day story. You may not know all of these people by name, but the work they did when they were alive have made sure that we have many of the open spaces, animals, birds, and sea life that we have still and also helped to shape some of the policies we have today. If you look at most of their lives you’ll find that they weren’t perfect, but without their efforts we wouldn’t know or have nearly as much as what we do today.

John James Audubon: You’re probably familiar with the name Audubon if you have spent any time in the natural or conservation world, but may not have known that the name is from this man and his work with nature and birds. He’s one of the earlier proponents of all things in the natural world that is well known today and his work still has an impact on our lives today. He’s most well known for his artistic talents and desire to paint and describe the birds of America. Today his paintings and descriptions are still consulted by bird lovers and appreciated by nature lovers too.

John Muir: He’s definitely a name you may not know, but you probably know the organization he started: the Sierra Club. He’s also the one who really got the US started on defining and protecting national parks. Interestingly enough he immigrated to America as a young boy and only really got interested in the environment from a lesson when he went to university. The rest, as they say, was history because he went out and explored the US and even parts of Canada, making lots of records of geology and botany as he went, and eventually making recommendations to Congress on the importance of national parks (specifically Yosemite) and conservation.

George Washington Carver: He’s someone that many schools still include in their curriculum because of when he lived, and the fact that as a black man in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s he was educated and was able to prove some of the important farming practices that we recognize today like crop rotation and crop diversity to help keep the ground and crops healthy. One of the things he’s most known for are the over 300 uses for peanuts that he discovered.

Theodore Roosevelt: This is a name you should know since he was a US President from 1901-1909. He could be considered a contemporary of John Muir, and like Muir always had a passion for the natural world. Roosevelt helped establish some 200 national forests, monuments, parks, sanctuaries, and refuges, protecting so many diverse places, plants and animals around the US. Many of the conserved places we can visit today are still here because he made the effort to protect them.

Rachel Carson: She started with a passion for aquatic biology and was able to share her wisdom through books, including some that helped make significant progress on the global environmental movement. Unlike many of the other people we’re exploring today, she not only appreciated nature, she spoke strongly about some of the ways that we were damaging our environment and therefore the future of our world with our use of pesticides including DDT (which we don’t use anymore as a result).

Jacques Cousteau: This is a name you probably recognize because he is the most contemporary on the list and because of his life-long work on and under the seas. He was part of creating the scuba technology we use today, found several well known shipwrecks, and loved exploring the oceans. It’s in part because of his passion and work that we know as much as we do today, have as much interest in, and are able to do as much under the seas as we are.

These leaders remind us that the most success happens when there’s a combination of appreciation and prevention. It may not be fun, but it’s important to consider the downsides and the negative impact that you can have and how things can go wrong. But the world (and your clients) would quickly tire of constantly being on alert for fixing things and bad things happening, so it’s important to balance that with lots of appreciation and recognition of all the good that surrounds us.

Progress for the Earth and You

This week around the world many people are taking part in a big project that can best be understood as an incremental success effort. That project? Earth Day. It’s an interesting topic to discuss when it comes to success, because even in the last year we’ve had some failures as more animals and plants have been declared extinct. But at the same time I feel like those who started and led the charge over the years to get people to not only understand the impact that how we humans live has on our world and also learning to appreciate the natural world around us, both be disappointed in how little we’ve done but thankful at the same time that we haven’t just ignored the need and given up based on how massive the work is.

Incremental success efforts are those that take many years to document significant progress, which is why they’re measured not in total success, but incremental progress. In the case of our Earth, some of the “progress” is the fact that we’re not going backwards on all of our efforts. Other progress is in zoos and non profit organizations that work really hard to not only keep species alive for now but also thriving to such a degree that we’re able to be assured that these species aren’t going to go extinct any time soon both in captivity and the wild. Other organizations and people work hard to come up with new ideas that move the needle just a little bit on sustainability and understanding the impact that certain chemicals and behaviors have on the planet. And then still others put in most of their effort into raising awareness so that more “regular” people understand the little but consistent things they can do to both minimize their footprint and help the Earth thrive for hundreds more years. Each little bit of progress incrementally moves the success efforts in the right direction, and if we all give our little bit (or more than the minimum we have to) we’ll see real progress some day.

When you’re dealing with a success effort that’s as large and encompassing as saving the planet, it’s rare that it’s a one-and-done effort. But just because the success journey you’re on isn’t as big, doesn’t mean that you can’t use the incremental success concept to help you be more successful. It’s especially good for projects that aren’t time sensitive but you want to make consistent, forward progress on. For example if you own your home and have 6 projects on your to-do list, depending on the cost and work maybe you divide them up over 6 or 12 or even 18 years. It helps you to not be constantly thinking about what you’re not getting done, but focusing on doing the work that you’ve committed to and doing it well. So what progress are you going to make in your life and the world with the rest of this year?

Kids Sometimes Ask Tough Questions

Kids always ask the tough questions, don’t they?! This weekend you may get a couple of those tough ones, questions that are especially tough to help them understand if you’re not religious (Jewish or Christian) with the events of Passover and Good Friday (both starting or happening on Friday, today) and Easter (Sunday for most of the world). Yes, some of the questions they may ask will have to do with the stories behind the events, which if you’re not familiar with them you can answer with a simple online search. But beyond sharing the basic stories, you may have the opportunity to discuss some deeper topics that help address some of the ‘why’ questions behind these stories and give your kids some application on topics that they hear adults discuss but may have been too young to really start understanding, until now.

Choice: Throughout these two events (Passover and Good Friday/Easter) people had to make decisions. Some of them chose based on their fears, and some chose based on their faith, love and compassion. Just like the people in these stories, we’re given tons of choices to make each day. Sometimes we choose to take action or disregard the information, and face whatever the results or consequences might be. Sometimes we’re too blind to see the right choice or too stubborn to make the right choice. But when we really care about something or someone we’ll make the best choice we possibly can because the result matters to us.

New Life: I know what comes to mind when we talk about ‘new life’ during this time of year are all the baby animals, and that’s certainly a healthy way to talk about new life. But sometimes a new life means starting over or starting fresh as we see in the Passover story, which is something that can help kids who are moving to a new town or state, or even just a new school. Sometimes new life means having an experience that completely changes your perspective or brings you to a level of knowledge and understanding that means you’ll never look at life again in the way that you used to as we see in the story of Good Friday/Easter, and kids experience as they learn the truth about Santa and others like him or interact with someone who is homeless. As we see in nature, new life definitely can be a good thing, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t come with growing pains.

Hope: Our third topic could have been death because it’s relevant to both events, but as important as it is to come to terms with the concept of death, I think it’s more important to teach your kids about hope. Why is hope so important? Because when you make the tough choices and when you have to live through the growing pains of new life, one of the best supports and encouragements can be the hope you have about your destination and what you’re creating. We don’t work on addressing race conflicts or climate change because it’s as easy to “fix” as it is to make a cup of coffee or lemonade, we do it because we have hope that if we take action now someday the world will be less in crisis mode and instead in the direction of healing and community. So many generations before us have believed in a better world, is that what we’re passing on to the next generation?

Whether you have a time of religious celebration this weekend, gather with family ‘just because’, or it’s just a normal weekend for you, I encourage you to be a little more open and patient with your kids when they ask some of those tough questions, because every question is an opportunity for connection and communication if we’re willing to make it such.

Spring Cleaning and Growing Your Business

As you know I find it important as a business owner to pay attention to seasons and holidays because they are things that affect a large percentage of everyone’s customers. The season we’re definitely, finally in is spring in the US, with warmer temperatures, nicer weather, and lots and lots of green growth everywhere, not to mention all the new animal life springing up too. But spring often means more than just a change in the world of nature, we also talk about “spring cleaning,” growing in our personal lives, and holidays like Easter/Passover and Mother’s Day that mean a lot to many people. Today let’s talk about two aspects of spring as they relate to our businesses.

Spring is a time for growth, and one of the things that can help our businesses stay growing and successful is to plant many seeds. What does this mean? It means being willing to say “yes” to new opportunities, continually making an effort to build relationships, participating in social groups, investing in new marketing opportunities or giving some that we’ve had success with in the past another try, adding new products or services to our offerings, sponsoring new local teams or non-profits, venturing into new industries or niches, adding new employees, and providing new training opportunities for employees, just to name a few.

The thing is, of the plants that have all started growing now, some will need pruning and some will need removing in the near future, which means spring is also a time for pruning or cleaning. Yes, as I remind every year it’s time to refresh your website if you haven’t yet this year. It’s time to remove outdated products, services or marketing that isn’t working for you. It’s time to make changes to your employees and leadership team. Pruning or cleaning doesn’t mean that they weren’t once effective or that you didn’t have a reason for them when they were started, it just means that it’s time for a change.

If you think about some of the woods you may drive past or homes that aren’t well landscaped, you know how Mother Nature can easily and totally conquer an area with whatever plants will grow and thrive. So yes, growth can happen even if you don’t initiate changes or prune things, but there is often wasted space or effort or resources when you aren’t intentional about your growth. There’s nothing wrong with being sentimental even as a business owner, but if your goal really is to be successful and have a profitable business, usually there has to be some intentional action taken and sometimes tough choices made to let go of what’s underperforming or not really a necessary based on how the world has changed. So this spring what areas of your business are you investing in to help them grow, and what areas are you changing or cutting back?

Don’t Forget the Joy

In case you haven’t seen the news over the past year and a half, there’s been a big change in the world of work. They’ve even given it a title: The Great Resignation. In short, scores of people are calling it quits at work and moving to a new source of income. Why? One of the reasons people have shared that they’re making the change is the pandemic has finally been the last straw that made them decide that they weren’t going to continue to work at a job that felt more like a vacuum to the soul than a contribution to the world. Harsh, yes I know, but that’s how some businesses treat their employees, or at least how some of them feel treated. And unfortunately I’ve seen it from more than a couple of my connections, clients and friends, that they’ve made changes in where they work since the pandemic began.

One of the things that the business book I’m reading this month shared about was the fact that work hasn’t always been and isn’t always a take-it-or-leave-it experience. Work doesn’t have to be miserable and feel like a waste of 6+ hours of your day multiple days a week. Yes, part of it is about the attitude that you bring with you to work and how you approach work. But part of it is about finding work that’s a good match for who you are, your skill set, your experiences and how/where you want to grow in your life.

When we’re on a success journey, the same is true. There are so many moving parts that we are trying to keep up in the air and moving forward, not to mention that we’re trying to keep up with the speed that the world seems to be moving, and we forget a really important part: the joy. Let’s face it: any part of our life can be as boring, dry, dull, or repetitive as we let it be. Or we can do a better job of getting involved in projects that truly mean something to us or have a directly positive impact on others or our planet, as well as making sure that we don’t intentionally or unintentionally cut the fun out of the success journey we’re on. Just because it involves work or even hard work and lots of effort, doesn’t mean that it has to be boring. Intentionally including fun as part of your success journey is of course more fun, but it also helps keep you motivated and encouraged to keep making progress. How do you include joy as part of your success journeys?

A Handwritten Legacy

As I’ve said before I’m so thankful to live in the time that we do. But as one of those who grew up before digital was everywhere, there are some things that are more part of the past that haven’t really been brought into this new evolution of our world. What brought this reflection on? I was thinking about the upcoming Easter holiday and how as a kid I used to get cards from my grandmothers, and how I treasure the cards that I’ve kept along with any letters they sent me over the years. The cards themselves aren’t anything overly special (cards like them are available at any and all stores that sell pretty cards), the treasure is in the message they may have written and in seeing their handwriting. Both of my grandmothers had beautiful handwriting, and I love being able to look at the cards and recognize their handwriting and feel a real connection with them even though they’ve both passed on. I can recognize the handwriting of each family member, and I appreciate having their handwriting as part of the treasures of my family that I keep. And while all handwriting may not always be beautiful or special, it is another way that we share part of who we are with the world.

I absolutely appreciate many of the changes that the internet has brought on: that we’ve got a basically eternal copy of everything, that we can store an almost unlimited number of pictures or videos, that we can easily communicate with people who speak different languages relatively accurately, and that we can record our stories to share with others. I am thankful that communication can takes seconds rather than days to receive a mailed letter or hours to make a phone call happen, and that we can video chat so we can see each other “in person” as often as we want without having the travel that we used to.

But as much as I appreciate having the ability to keep a record of these memories for years and generations to come and to be in regular contact easily with loved ones, I don’t think that today’s young people appreciate some of the things that we’ve lost over the years when the world turned digital. A text or email may happen more frequently, but doesn’t come with the level of humanity, recognition or individualization that used to exist more often in the world. So go ahead and hold onto a few more of the pieces of artwork that your kids create even after you take the photos of it, send a few more handwritten cards to seniors and all other family members, and write more love notes to your significant other. And while it may sound ironic, make sure you do add digital copies of all the handwritten letters and other treasures you have from your grandparents and older family members (including those who have passed on) to the digital archives you’re creating to pass on to your children so they’ll have a permanent record of the things that mattered to you as well as more tangible proof that these people lived and some of the intricacies of who they were.

Working with Business Changes

There are so many important things to consider when starting a business. Some affect every business that wants to succeed in this day and age, others are more industry or even location specific. One of the things I always caution all of my social media clients as well as new business owner clients on is the fact that while there are so many great tools available to use to help build your business, it’s important to remember that with some of these tools you have less control over your future than with others. For example, very few weeks go by that you don’t hear about someone having their social media account restricted or being denied access to ads platforms, and unfortunately often you have no idea why and can’t find anyone to help you get answers. Yes, it’s a huge gift to have all these tools like social media, payment processors, website hosts and creation sites, all doing their jobs so we can focus on running our business but what if something changes? How do you react (and are you prepared to react)?

As you know I’m a huge reader. I love books of all kinds and while I don’t download many apps on my phone, I do have several book reading apps. In recent weeks two of them (both large and well-known companies) reached out by email to inform their users that due to changes in one of the app stores their ability to have people buy books directly through the app was changing. Now, we are in early days of this development so I share the rest of this story making that very clear, which means things could change and I’ll update the post if they do. One of the companies informed their readers of the change that would be happening and how the app will now help them pay through the app store instead of the company app directly and that it was really easy to do. The other informed readers that the only way to purchase books now was through their website (yes, their email was pretty much that brief and lacking in any evidence of having tried to do anything different or better for their subscribers).

As business owners there’s always a good way, an average way, and a not great way to handle any change that happens in your business. I would be frustrated if I was in their position, absolutely. But obviously there is a way through this situation as the one company communicated, so either the other company and the app store couldn’t come to the same agreement or the company didn’t try. While I appreciate how quickly and clearly they both communicated the change, one company made it sound like they really don’t care about their users or trying to find an alternative or solution to the changes. It doesn’t make me look down on that company or necessarily impact my future purchases with them, but it sure makes me wonder about their future and the leadership team they have.

We never want to isolate or rebuff those who have been paying customers, so we have to always be aware that how we do business may change or be impacted. So always have a backup plan to all of your apps, tools and services you use (I have a folder in my email with companies I hear good things about so if I need to switch or need a change I’ve got some recommendations ready). Always have several someones read through really important communications so that you get feedback from different perspectives. And do your absolute best to find the middle ground in your communications between sharing emotion that will connect with your people and letting the emotion of the situation get to you. What are your recommendations for and experiences in dealing with changes and situations like these?