You HAVE to buy my product!!!

Last week, I ran into a friend of mine at the airport.  He was just returning from one of our manufacturing sites and he looked angry and tired.  He told me that his contacts at the site wasn't listening to him.  He felt that they would get better results and would be rewarded for it if they followed his recommendations.

He's probably right.  He's a fine engineer, and his theories have been proven correct many times.  I understand his frustration.  I see this frustration every week when central resources have ideas that they KNOW are right, that they KNOW will make the sites run better, but they don't get cooperation.  I've felt this frustration myself many times for many years.

But central staff people like me are setting ourselves up for frustration if we forget that we are SUPPORT staff, and that we are always SELLING what we have to offer.  Our functional leadership may tell us that we don't need to sell anything.  They tell us that, in many cases, the decision has been made from the Top and that all we have to do is tell the plants to get moving.  But this is rarely the case.  Unless our project involves a safety, legal, quality issue or a new product we need to get to market, the plants can almost always tell us no. 

All too often, we take this personally.  We need to recognize, instead, that we are always selling.  If you want to make a sale, you never tell your customer that they HAVE to buy.  Instead, you focus on what the customer needs and you are thrilled if they just TRY your product.  You work to ensure that their trial is a success so that they come back for more.  Whenever possible, improve your product using their ideas.  This is the attitude that we central resources need to take because it breeds humility, patience, a focus on relationships and service, taking the time to communicate potential benefits and actual results, and respect for the autonomy of the customer.   This is the attitude that I'm taking lately and I seem to be making inroads in more places and with tougher "customers" than I have in the past.

Something they can agree to

At work, I create "standards" that I then have to roll out across six production sites across the country.  If some sites don't agree to use the "standards", then I'm not successful.  It isn't a "standard" unless everyone uses it.

The challenge is that I can't order people to use the "standard".  They don't report to me.  I can develop a "standard" that really works, and some sites might love it and use it.  But other sites might be so busy with other commitments and pressures that they never even try it.  I've struggled with this for years (as have all of my peers doing similar work).

But I got some great coaching this week from the plant manager of one of the six sites.  He told me:

• When leadership agrees that my standard must roll out, stop assuming that all sites will cooperate. They have so many pressures and so little staffing, they can't roll-out everything that hierarchy demands.  Even if the roll-out is a direct order, they sometimes have to say "no" because they get more direct orders than they can possibly deliver.  They'll say "no" if they think they can do so without too much pain and if they aren't sure that what I'm offering them is vital to their success.
• Therefore, never say, "My new standard has been approved for roll-out.  Who can you assign to help me roll it out at your site?"  Instead, say, "This is what my standard can do for you.  Is there one production line where we can try it, at least for a while, so that your people have a chance to evaluate it?"

The plant manager told me that he and his peers can easily agree to a "test line", but they think long and hard before committing to deploying something permanently across all their lines, even if someone outside the plant has declared that it is the new "standard".  He said that, if my "standard" really is great, I'll get my roll-out eventually.  If the test line likes my new standard, the next line will hear about it, and the next.  After a critical mass tries adopts the standard, then I can come back and ask for a resource to finish the roll out.

I've sometimes worked this way, and sometimes have not, but my mentor has convinced me it's always the way to go for my kind of work.  Some projects, such as a new product we're launching in the marketplace in the fall, are unstoppable.  No plant manager can say "no".  But my projects can always be put off.  They involve better ways of doing things that are already "working", just not as well as they could be.  My projects are not as urgent.  So I must always start establish a foothold at each site and then wait for momentum to build.

Give me back my brain!!!!!

We've told our kids a million times, "Don't interrupt people when they're talking or they are busy.  It's not polite."  But it hasn't had much of an effect.  We need to do two things differently:

1. Find a new way to explain to them why this is important.
2. Apply some kind of discipline, some kind of appropriate consequence for interrupting.

Explanations help teach principles that we hope will become part of our kids' lifelong values and personal philosophies.  But we need discipline, too, to ensure the behavior changes. 

Yesterday, I figured out a new way to explain why interruptions matter in life.  I told them:

Every human being has a right to decide, moment to moment, what they want to focus their attention on.  This is how we each feel in control of our lives. 

When you interrupt someone, they can no longer focus on what they were doing. You've taken control of their brain, even if just for a little while. You've taken away their right to choose the object of their concentration.  They resent the loss of control.

What I want you to do, instead, is this:  Interrupt immediately if you have an urgent need.  But otherwise, wait.  Respect the right of others to choose where they focus their brains.  Assess whether they are engrossed in conversation, focused on a difficult task, enjoying a movie or music or peace and quiet.  Decide whether to wait for a better time.  If not, gently get their attention and if they decide to ask you to wait, accept their decision as their right.

For discipline, Chris and I have agreed that any completely unreasonable interruption, any "hijacking of our brains" will be countered with an immediate 15 minute "hijacking" of their brains:  For the next 15 minutes, they can read or meditate, but can't do the other things they'd prefer to focus on.  No TV, computers, etc.  They'll then experience what they just put us through--a temporary hijacking of the mind--and will be better able to resist their next impulse to interrupt

Cry first, then keep a stiff upper lip

Chris and I were talking about someone we both love and admire.  She can come across as stoic.  She's had many great misfortunes in her life.  But in every case, people don't see her grieve much.  She pulls herself together quickly, puts on a stiff upper lip, and gets back to fulfilling her duties to friends and family.  She's quick to say, "I need to move on, put one foot in front of the other, and get back to doing what I was meant to do in life."  She also would challenge her loved ones, when they experienced misfortune, "Get yourself together because your kids (or friends or others) need you."

The popular notion is that being stoic like this is not healthy.  All too often, people who are stoic move on too quickly from grief.  They don't process their feelings.  They "move on" to "move away"--away from their intense feelings, afraid of their intensity, unwilling to face them.  And, in doing so, they leave issues unresolved.  Ironically, by "moving on" too quickly, they can never leave.

But is this woman Chris and I admire really like that?  In our hearts, we know she is not.  We know that she feels deeply and faces her grief with courage.  She has the best kind of stoicism, the best kind of "stiff upper lip".  We feel that she has mastered the art of facing her grief honestly, deeply, and quickly so that she can pull herself together quickly and get back to serving her mission in life.  She cries first, then puts on a stiff upper lip.

I'm reminded of my favorite passage from Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson.  Morrie Schwartz was the author's professor back in college.  Morrie was dying of Lou Gehrig's disease.  The author, Mitch Albom, spent fourteen Tuesdays with Morrie before Morrie died.  In this time, Morrie taught Mitch how to live.  My favorite passage in the book describes how a person can fully experience grief or any other intense feeling, and by fully letting themselves go with it, they can then detach themselves.  They can then move on with a stiff upper lip.  On the sixth Tuesday, Morrie says:

"Take any emotion--love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness.  If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief.  You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

 But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head, you experience them fully and completely.  You know what pain is.  You know what love is.  You know what grief is.  And only then can you say, 'All right.  I have experienced that emotion.  I recognize that emotion.  Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment."

This is the secret.  This is how the woman that Chris and I love and admire manages to move on quickly.  This is how she can have a huge heart and be stoic at the same time, how she can move on quickly and get back to living.