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In the current (May 2013) issue of Harvard Business Review, there’s an article called Creating the Best Workplace on Earth. In it the authors talk about what employees really need to be their most productive. Among the six factors they identify is this one: employees need an environment where they can discover and magnify their strengths. In other ...
As I’m writing this, I’m listening to the 60s channel on SiriusXM. It’s a channel I listen to a lot. That particular era is kind of my musical “home base.” It’s the music I tend to gravitate to — it’s my default. (I’ve heard it said that the music we tend to gravitate to is ...
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When I tell people that, as a motivational speaker, I work with, and speak for, organizations that want their people to play a bigger game and produce unreasonable results, the first question I get is, “What do you mean by unreasonable? Isn’t that kind of negative?”
To answer that, let’s first take a look at what reasonable results might look like. When I look up the word “reasonable” in ...
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I don’t know what world you live in. I mean that literally. I don’t know what business you’re in, what your customers think of you, how people treat you–I don’t know any of those things. I don’t know what world you live in. But one thing that I do know, with certainty, is this:
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“Change is hard.”
“People hate change.”
“Change stresses me out.”
Bull.
As a professional keynote speaker, I’m on the road a lot. I speak to associations, organizations, and businesses across the country, and everywhere I go I hear people whining about change.
“Things are changing too fast.”
“I don’t adapt to change well.”
“Change is HAAAAAARRRRRDDDDD!”
None of it’s true, and I can prove ...
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I was at an event recently where one business speaker asserted that there were four words you should never tell a customer: “I can’t do that.” And he had some very good reasons for this assertion:
Your competitors love it when you tell a customer, “I can’t do that.”
It’s music to their ears.
When you tell a customer, “I can’t do that,” you’re giving them an excuse to look elsewhere, and you’re opening a window of ...
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Some of you know that I used to produce a sketch comedy TV show in Seattle called Almost Live! It was on the air for fifteen years, and number one in its time slot for ten straight years. During those fifteen years, my team and I won more than 100 Emmy Awards. At the risk of sounding immodest, we were really, really good at what we did. Our ...
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It was 4:00am yesterday morning, and I was driving to the airport for a speaking engagement in Pittsburgh. This is a pretty common occurrence for me (not necessarily the Pittsburgh part, but the rest of it). All of a sudden I had one of those, “Oh no, did I leave the iron on?” moments. I forget what it was that I was actually worried about—it wasn’t the iron. Probably, “Did I lock the door?” or “Did I water the plants?” ...
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I’m getting ready to board a plane, something I do several times a week. Each time, I’m putting my trust—and my life—in the hands of the pilot. This is, in all likelihood, a person I’ve never met, and never will meet. But I rarely, if ever, think about it, and I’ll bet you don’t either. The trust is so ...