What's Important To You? Probably Not Honesty.

A little over a decade ago I was lucky enough to have some time off before starting a new job.  I had a ball taking my two elder kids to school and kindy and had oodles of time to spend with our then new born.

I also took the opportunity to engage a life coach for just a few sessions.  It was someone I had met and observed as living life to the full.  Not 'crazy busy' full, more 'happy and contented' full. 

She taught me a wonderful technique for helping me get to the cause of any behaviour - ask 'why?' at least three times.  Why is this problem?  Why does answer to the first question make it a problem?  Why is that important to me?  She helped me use the technique to explore my core value - the one thing I really value and believe in above all else.

It started with what is important to you?  Why is that important to you?  And so on. 

What I learned surprised me.  The things I thought I valued, I didn't really value.  Material success, fitness, friendships and so on.  If I didn't know my core values, it wasn't surprising to subsequently observe that most people don't know theirs.  

One of the reasons I say this is because I believe you cannot live at war with yourself - you cannot act in a way that is not consistent with your vales.  The best example I can use is 'honesty'.  

Most people would say that honesty is a core value they hold.  Sounds reasonable, if not familiar.  We all hate being on the receiving end of a dishonest act, right?  Yet I wonder if we were to survey these people and ask them if they have ever taken a longer lunch than their employment allows, or left early after coming in late? A study by University of Massachusetts researcher Robert Feldman found that 60% of people lied at least once in a 10 minute conversation with a stranger.  Even more staggering was the average was 2.92 lies in that same 10 minute conversation with a stranger! 

In the 1950's USA it was estimated that 25% of women and 50% of men had engaged in an affair.  In 2012 a research project showed that 57% of men and 54% of women admit to an affair.  Furthermore 74% of men and 68% of women said they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught.  Interestingly this dispells the myth that men are cheaters, and women are not, and backs up the study at Indiana University which showed that infidelity rates between men and women are virtually the same.

The numbers seem to prove that we, humans, male or female, are hardly an honest bunch.

But this blog is not about honesty, or infidelity, nor is about taking a moral position on these or in fact any matter.

What it is about is encouraging you to take the time to figure out what is important to you.  To understand what your core values are.  Take 20 minutes a week and sit and contemplate (and write) about the things that are important to you.  Then ask why they are important.  Then ask again why the answers to the first question are important.  Keep doing it until you can't answer, and there you will find what you value. 

As I said in a previous post, albeit about sales team performance, once you know what you value, you will understand how your beliefs have been formed.  And from your beliefs you will understand better why you feel the way you do about certain things.  And once you can decipher your feelings, you will be better placed to understand why you behave the way you do.

And importantly, you will be able to make changes.  Changes that will make your world, and indeed the entire world, a better place.

If you'd like to read more on this topic and how it relates to problem solving, here is a useful article called "An Introduction to 5-Why".

Cheers!

Underperforming Sales Team Meets Management Expectations

I was once being interviewed for the role of Sales Manager in a company with a then under-performing sales team.  I had taken a role as a sales person in the company only a few months earlier and was surprised to learn that only about a third of the sales people were meeting or exceeding their targets.

There was a 'let's beat up sales' culture, while the company was at consecutive quarter number 20 (yes, that's 5 years) of revenue decline.

Why was the sales team not meeting sales target?  Because they didn't need to, as long as they were hitting the crucial target of their executives' performance expectation, year after year.

When I said this in the interview the Country Manager looked stunned.  He made it clear that he expected better of the sales team.  Somewhat red faced, and in what may have been a career limiting move, I told him I was about to prove to him that he didn't expect more of them and they were in fact delivering to his expectation.

As a New Zealand subsidiary of a multi-national tech company I suspected he would have a budgeted cost in his annual financial plan to cover the expense of sending local sales people who exceeded target to the company's regional over achievers club.  When I asked if this was true, he validated my assumption.  Sure enough he had to pay for over-achievers to go on a weeklong 'training' expedition somewhere in Asia or the Pacific.

Then I asked the telling question, "what percentage of the sales team can you afford to send to club based on the dollar value you have budgeted?  I'm guessing you could send about 30% of the sales team?"

I hit the bulls eye, and he wasn't just red faced, his jaw hot the floor.

However, not only was the sales team working to their executives' assumptions and expectations, they were working to their own.  At the start of the year they opened their Sales Plan letters and looked at the target they had been set and, 70% having missed last year's, instantly assumed that they would miss the new year's target as well.  In their minds they had failed before they started.


I was shown a model by a friend of mine, included below.  It will help you break down your own actions, and the actions of people you work with including colleagues, customers and business partners. 

People's actions are driven by how they think and feel about a situation.  How they feel about a situation is driven by what they believe about the situation and the assumptions they have made.  And their beliefs and assumptions are driven by what they value.  I will save the discussion on core values, and whether people really know their own, for another post, but let me deal with the other three.

My actions are ultimately determined by my core values.

In the scenario above, as a sales guy opening my sales plan envelope on the first day of a new year, chances are I have assumed the target will grow even though I didn't reach last year's number.  Once coupled with a belief that nothing I do will change my chances of success, I am instantly disengaged and definitely won't own my sales number.  I am likely to come in late before leaving early, drink a lot of coffee (normally with colleagues while we whine about everything wrong with the business), and execute minimal sales activities.

On the other hand if I believe, based on correct and validated assumptions, that I can make my number, I will feel engaged and motivated to get out and sell.  Why?  Because on day one I assumed success and believed I could get there.

The lesson for sales managers and executives is this.  Assume and plan for 100% success of all sales people.  Don't require that sales people change their actions but instead help them change their beliefs and assumptions.  They will make more calls and work harder when you create an environment where they believe they can achieve, and the company is wired and configured in a way that demonstrates it genuinely expects them to succeed.  How does a sales person know it's your expectation that they succeed?  Because you invest in training, presales resource, marketing and events.  You spend time with them sharing your dream and vision for your organisation's customers.  You create an environment where they can trip over and spill the ball, but have your support to get up and still win the game.

The lesson for sales people is equally as simple.  If you assume you will fail, you will.  Don't be a victim - either get off your chuff and make difference in the environment you are in or get a new job working in an environment where you believe you can succeed.  You will be happier, more motivated and you will make a difference.

Here's to success.

Cheers!

It's true, Wellington is dying...

The Prime Minister is understandably under fire for his remark that Wellington is a dying city.  And why not?  It makes a great headline for our media organisations and it certainly gives David Shearer something to respond to.  But, given the context of the remark, to a group of business leaders, was he wrong?  I think not.

Consider multinational and big business head offices - how many are left in Wellington?  When I first arrived here in 1994 Wellington still had the oil companies, the banks, Telecom and a host of other corporate head offices.  We might of even still been making cars.  And of course Wellington had the business of government.  Not now - not even all the business of government is in Wellington.  The Ministry of Health, for example, has national contact centres in Wanganui and Dunedin (a great idea if you ask me).  

It was also a dull place, full of men in bad fitting grey suits and woman who dressed like soldiers (at least according to the French ambassador, Jacques le Blanc in 1991).  But not today.  Everyday is casual Friday for a lot of workers, and TradeMe even has a slide in their office, located in a building they share with XERO. 

TradeMe, XERO? Who are these people?  They are representatives of what Wellington is  becoming.  They are not the new Wellington, but contributors to its future.

I could dwell on the arts and culture, the wonderful events and the great entertainment Wellington has, but I won't.  John Key wasn't talking about them.  He was talking about business.

If we are all honest, we'd admit he is right. And Wellington as we knew it had to die. The business of Government does not create wealth, it only ever re-distributes wealth created by others, less the overhead of the distribution process.  A nation needs government, and I am happy to pay my taxes for roads, hospitals, schools and trade commissioners, but ultimately the business of government is a consumer, not a wealth creator.  It's job is to create an environment that allows people to create businesses which can create wealth.  It's job is not to employ people just to keep the offices full.

The great news for Wellington is that our reliance on the business of government is less now than ever before.  There are the obvious 'new' business's, some I have already mentioned, like TradeMe and XERO and of course there is Weta and the whole network of support businesses built because of Weta.  But there is also hospitality, and of course amazing events like the IRB Sevens, which create hundreds of jobs and deliver millions into the region's economy.  

But importantly there are business incubators like Creative HQ helping people with new ideas get commercial, Australian contact centres opening here and innovation hubs like the Grow Wellington Clean Tech Centre. 

There are people on the roads, and people on trains and buses.  There are more in cafe's and bars and more walking along the waterfront at lunchtime.  Yes, old jobs have gone, but there are new jobs in there place otherwise the people would be gone.  And while many of the new jobs are in smaller companies, some of these smaller companies will go on to become big companies.  Just give them time.

Key was right.  Wellington as we knew it is dying, if not already dead.  RIP old Wellington, you served us all well.  But clear the decks because a new Wellington is emerging.

Cheers!

Is Security In 'The Cloud' A Real Problem?

There is an awful lot of discussion around cloud computing and security, and when I tell people that I work with a number of cloud providers the first question to come up is always, "how secure is it really?"

The answer is, I don't know.  I'm not that technical and I'm not going to argue with people who are far more technically competent than me anymore than I would debate modern economics with Adam Smith, if he was still alive.

But here is what I do know.  The major cloud vendors including Google, Amazon Web Services and others spend more on security than New Zealand's entire GDP.  Well, maybe not, but you get my point.

For anyone in New Zealand to think they can secure their on-premise email server or storage more tightly than major cloud providers needs to think again.  Especially when most business hate paying insurance companies for business insurance, let alone technical consultants to mitigate (technology) risks of things that 'only happen to others'!  As a consequence most businesses have very weak secruity when compared to the cloud.

Admittedly cloud providers do make a big target, but then if I am just looking to take control of a mail server to spam the world selling knock off medication, hot dates or porn, I would probably target the local accountant's mail server, not Google's.  

There are issues of data sovereignty when it comes to citizen data being in the cloud.  For example do I want my health records, which could identify me, being stored in a database in another jurisdiction when that data's privacy is subject to that jurisdiction's privacy law?  Maybe, but probably not.  If it was Australia it might be OK.  The UK, perhaps. But Nigeria, heck no!  For now, let's keep that local.

But most other data is no problem.  Why couldn't the location of a government service be on a Google map served up from anywhere in the world?  After-all if we serve it up locally to the world via the internet, the world then has that data anyway.  Same for Statistics New Zealand data, much of which is already freely available.  Just like crime data, property information, natural hazards and probably the Colonels secret recipe - I must Google that!

Do I want my council, or the government, spending millions per annum to buy and manage technology infrastructure that can be procured as a service in the cloud for a fraction of the cost?  No more than I want them to grow their own tea and coffee so they 'know exactly what it's made of and how it is configured'.

The cloud is here and, in the case of reputable providers, because of their size and scale, it is likely to be far more secure than most on premise options in New Zealand.  Don't be careless, and do your research, but you could likely save yourself a lot of time and money while improving overall business capability and performance, by leveraging the cloud. 

You're probably already using Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, Twitter, Gmail/Yahoo or Hotmail, DropBox, WebEx, Spotify, GoogleDocs, Office365 or a myriad of other cloud based solutions.   Why not do the same in your place of work? The cloud awaits your business.

Cheers!