I clipped this article to my Evernote this morning and recommend you do too. The essence is this – if you really want new behavior on your team, no amount of persuasion (negative or positive) is going to get you there. You have to change the environment.

 

To keep a company on track and accountable, numbers are fundamental, but consider this. $500 million, $200 million, or any abstract amount of money isn’t really an objective. It’s an outcome. Revenue is a by-product of one person taking informed and inspired action that benefits another person.

 

Scale that, and you’ve created an unstoppable market force.

 

Employees want meaningful work that helps them reach a personal goal, master a skill, earn respect in a peer group, gain acceptance for their ideas, and meet challenges that make them better versions of themselves. Numbers are vital compass points, but they don’t persuade by themselves. What can we do, starting with what we have and where we are right now, to turbocharge our team projects by replacing persuasion with one specific, empowering environmental change? This thought inspired me today and I hope it inspires you too. Let’s try it out and see what happens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On my commute this morning, I heard an audio book author say that around 90% of our waking activity is driven by habit, rather than by conscious choice.

 

Ninety percent.

 

It occurred to me that we habitually toss a lot of buzz words around in our staff interactions without thinking very deeply about what they mean – or about the specific daily actions we have in mind when we use them. Words like:

 

• Channel

• Partner

• Customer

• Revenue Attainment

• Lead Generation

 

It’s easy to assume that because we say them all the time, everyone knows what they mean at StorageCraft. The more clear and intentional we become about defining (and modeling) these terms for our teams, the better they’ll get at saying “YES” to the daily actions that drive and support them. By extension, they’ll also get better at INITIATING those actions on their own, and saying “NO” to things that make us look busy without being effective.

 

Scattered action gets scattered results. So does scattered meaning. How can we use more precise language to channel StorageCraft’s amazing brain power in the right direction?

 

 

[LINKEDIN PULSE POST] WHY YOUR CHANNEL PARTNERS ARE NOT YOUR CUSTOMERS – Hans Peter Bech (average reading time – 6 minutes)

 

 

 

 

 

As we transitioned into 2016, we heard several key observations about the status-quo at StorageCraft. One of them was, “We love complexity, so we create complexity.” All over the company, people are responding to that observation and starting to simplify – but they want to do more.

 

Anything we build into our processes or products beyond the essential thing that solves the problem at hand creates a friction point – from a staffer trying to submit an internal form, to the placement and naming of a command button in SPX. Those friction points give off heat in the form of wasted motion and lost margin. It follows naturally that the more friction points we eliminate for our teams, our partners, and our end users, the faster and higher our revenue will rise.

 

How do we become great at taking friction out of the StorageCraft experience? Modeling others who do it well is a great way to start. Visit In-N-Out Burger and notice how many items are on the menu. How are you greeted at the drive-up? How do the employees treat each other behind the counter? Pay attention to the checkout experience on Amazon. Buy some personal business cards from MOO and see how they’re packaged.

 

Starting today, what actions can we take to make simplicity and clarity a visible and credible pillar of the StorageCraft brand? I’ll personally reimburse the first ten readers who bring me their In-N-Out receipt before 4pm on Wednesday for the cost of their burger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are the top six things on your priority list for today? Author Greg McKeown says that five of them are probably distractions.

 

Recently I started reading McKeown’s book called “Essentialism.” If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend it, not just for personal productivity benefits, but also for the impact it can have on leadership decisions. Nathan Myhvold’s 10,000x quote is probably an exaggeration, but it hammers home a crucial reminder. Effort alone is not a predictor of results – or rewards. Examples of the pareto principle at work are so abundant that it’s really not open for debate anymore.

 

Work hard. Move fast. Both important – but they only matter if we’re moving fast and working hard on the right things. Pushing harder on a flawed process only yields incremental rewards at best. The leaders who rise to the top are the ones who train themselves to say “no” to the nonessential and focus their energy and attention on doing fewer things better – and knowing which few yield the most results.

 

How can we get better at applying this way of thinking when we’re tasking our teams with income-producing activities? One obvious answer is that we can start by modeling it better as individuals.

 

 

THE UNIMPORTANCE OF PRACTIALLY EVERYTHING – Harvard Business Review (average reading time - 5 minutes)

 

 

 

 

The more our company grows, the more you’re going to be called on to give effective talks in front of groups. The group may be a handful of your direct reports, a roadshow audience, or a conference hall full of prospective partners. This isn’t optional or extracurricular. It’s part of the real work of a leader, and if we want our presentations to have an impact, to communicate a vision, and change behaviors, we’re all going to have to get better at preparing and delivering them.

 

To do that, it’s important to understand what moves people to action and how a great presentation frames one clear, actionable idea around a few key points that your audience can understand and respond to. The tough truth is that nobody cares about that data table on the screen. They want to know what it MEANS, and how to apply it to things that THEY want, like significance, connection, growth, and a sense of contribution. How can we become experts at turning facts and data into stories that inspire people to think and act bigger?

 

 

[VIDEO]  THE SECRET STRUCTURE OF GREAT TALKS – TEDxEast (viewing time – 18 minutes)

 

 

 

 

 

Every StorageCraft employee, no matter what their role or title might be, gets the same number of available work hours. It’s the choices we make minute by minute that determine how much value we get in return for those hours.

 

With all the big challenges we have in front of us, it’s more vital than ever to be clear on how we rank the actions that are truly important. The truth is that EVERYTHING we do matters – the real question is whether those actions move us closer to the outcomes we want. Yes, the big slide deck for the next board meeting is perceived as more “important” than five minutes listening intently to a junior staffer. Is it possible that the idea you get from that staffer – who’s closer to conditions on the ground than you are – might have far more positive revenue impact than the slide show? What about the ripple effect that employee will create when they leave your office? Having felt heard and valued for that five minutes, what confidence, vision, and energy will they carry back to the partners and coworkers they interact with today?

 

What could happen at StorageCraft if we started making choices based on significance, rather than on the surface importance of things?

 

 

[VIDEO] The Butterfly Effect – Andy Andrews (viewing time 9 minutes, 45 seconds)

 

 

 

 

How did Intel manage to dominate the microprocessor market for so many years?

 

They understood the power of convergence.

 

While their hottest selling chip was keeping their competitors on defense, their creative focus was on products three to five generations out. Rather than benchmarking on today’s capabilities, they looked at three key gating factors in their business and committed resources based on where those lines of technology would converge several years in the future. For Intel, those factors were feature size limits for microscopic components, the line width limitations of their fab tools, and uniform crystalline structure across ever bigger silicon surfaces. For us the gating factors might be operating system attributes, dashboard market trends, global data center practices, or something else entirely.

 

What’s important is not the factors themselves. It was Intel's way of thinking that made them successful – their ability to imagine a world beyond their immediate circumstances and work FROM a bigger outcome – not toward it.

 

Imagine what could happen at StorageCraft if we funded, staffed, equipped, and developed for where our market is going, instead of where it’s been. Who’s ready to quit the catch-up game and lead?

 

 

[ARTICLE] MEET THE 2016 CNBC DISRUPTOR 50 COMPANIES – CNBC (reading time – 3 minutes)