Are You Rewarding Your Work, or Avoiding Your Work?

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Yesterday I wrote that a truly successful person wouldn’t take the afternoon off to go see a movie. A colleague of mine countered that that person might, if they were celebrating a personal or business success. She makes a good point. (And she’s a Ph.D., which, although no guarantee, lends a certain magnitude to her thoughts.) I’ve been thinking about the distinction today, and it comes down to this: there’s a difference between rewarding your work and avoiding your work. ...

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Producing Results, Work Ethic

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Ask the Magic Question

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I have a confession to make: this has been a lazy week for me. Because of a combination of the holiday, travel, and some other nice diversions, I haven’t been as focused on business as I should have been. My guess is that you’ve been there too. Maybe not this week, but at some point you’ve been there. You’ve mentally “checked out,” and just like that, the momentum was lost. It’s like when you stop going to the gym for ...

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Creativity, Producing Results, The Beatles, Work Ethic

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Why Team Infighting is a Good Thing

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The audience never saw the fights, but I remember them vividly. As the producer of Seattle’s long-running (15 years!), legendary comedy TV show, Almost Live!, I saw the fights almost every week. They would happen in the editing room, at the writer’s table, in the rehearsal studio. Sometimes they’d be happening downstairs in the Almost Live! offices while the studio audience was being seated in the studio upstairs. They varied from mild to intense—and I loved them! As a leader, ...

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Producing Results, Teams, The Beatles, Work Ethic

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3 Things, in the Right Order

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I was just reading the June issue of Mensa Bulletin, the magazine of American Mensa (whose standards are clearly much lower than you’d think), and in it is a feature about the best advice its members have ever received. One in particular, submitted by Bernard Kitt, Ph.D., caught my eye. He writes:

There are only three things to remember:

  1. I will be happy
  2. I will make some money
  3. I will make other people happy

One hundred percent of the people ...

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Customer Service, Producing Results, The Beatles, Work Ethic

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Have You Set the Bar High Enough?

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How good is good? Consider the Beatles’ Let It Be album. It contains three #1 hits: the title track (Let It Be), Get Back, and The Long and Winding Road, along with several other wonderful songs (e.g., Two Of Us, Across the Universe, and I’ve Got a Feeling); the album itself went to #1; it won a Grammy for Best Original Score (since the album was basically the soundtrack to the movie of the same name),; and, if all that ...

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Creativity, Customer Service, Producing Results, The Beatles, Work Ethic

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So…What’s YOUR Excuse?

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We all have our favorite excuses for not being where we want to be—in our lives and in our businesses. “I don’t have enough money.” “I live in this little backwater town.” “I don’t know the right people.” “I don’t have the proper education.” “I have a funny accent.” We’ve heard all these excuses, and dozens more just like them. We’ve probably made more than a few of them ourselves. But when you think about it, they’re all variations on ...

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Creativity, Producing Results, The Beatles, Work Ethic

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Stop Playing Tic-Tac-Toe Leadership

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I had a wonderful phone conversation yesterday with a fellow Beatles fan whom I’ll call “Rich,” because that’s his name. As is generally the case when Beatles fans (or, in this case, fanatics) talk, the conversation soon turned to Beatles trivia. Rich asked me some great questions, and then he wanted me to ask him some. I asked a few, but he kept saying, “C’mon—make them harder!” I asked some tougher ones, but he kept at me: “Make them harder!” ...

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Leadership, Producing Results, The Beatles, Work Ethic

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3 Things You Can Do NOW to Build Your Business

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A friend of mine has a dog with cataracts. He (the dog) is perfectly happy going through his day, but he bumps into things a lot. It seems to me that a lot of businesses are plagued by “corporate cataracts.” There’s a lack of clarity, a lack of focus, in what they do. Their vision is cloudy, and this is costing them millions of dollars a year. So right now you’re either thinking, “Boy, I’m sure glad that’s not my ...

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Change, Producing Results, The Beatles, Work Ethic

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How the Little Guy Can Win

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Say you run a small business. (Go ahead, say it: “I run a small business.”) And say you’re competing against one or more big players in your industry. (Ditto.) Is there any way you can come out ahead in such an uneven battle? Is there any way the little guy can win? Yes, there is—but not if you try to beat the big guy at his own game. You have to play a different game. It’s how underdog basketball teams ...

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Change, Customer Service, Producing Results, The Beatles, Work Ethic

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Office Politics Made Simple

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“Office politics” has gotten a bad name, but it’s really nothing more or less than the informal communications network of an organization. At the first TV station I worked at, there was a guy named Rick who had really figured out this network to the nth degree. He had determined who the key players were in the organization, and who had influence over these key players (for example, the General Manager’s adminstrative assistant had influence over the General Manager). He ...

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Communication, Customer Service, Producing Results, Work Ethic

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