Almost Been There, Almost Done That – You’ve heard the saying “Been there, done that.” It’s often said to let someone know you have the shared the same experience that they are telling you about. I was thinking about this in terms of jobs and organization charts. If you hire somebody that’s “been there, done that” then there is a pretty good chance that he will be able to get the job done. If you hire somebody that’s “almost been there, almost done that” he is likely taking a step up in his career. There’s more risk with a person like this, but he might bring more energy to the job as well because it will represent a new challenge. But every once in a while we hire someone who has “never been there, never done that.” This seems odd, but it could have been the next person in line, someone that gets along with people, your good friend, the boss’s nephew, etc. I know a person who was an individual contributor for his whole career. He was a knowledgeable about marketing, so they made him a manager responsible for a worldwide group. What happened? In terms of supervisory skills, he had “never been there, never done that.” It wasn’t long before he and his entire group were ineffective. Here’s a fun idea. Take you current org chart and highlight the people into categories: BTDT, ABTADT, NDTNDT. This might give you an idea of where your people risks are. For even more fun, look at an org chart from a couple of years ago and see how many of the missing names fall into each category. And when you go to make a new hire, use this as another tool to gauge the risk of hiring that person.

Unconventional Wisdom – John Kenneth Galbraith coined the term “conventional wisdom” which is what people generally believe to be true. But some people never let go of it. Consider Ashley Smith who, by gaining the trust of her assailant, caused the capture of the Atlanta courthouse killer. But that didn’t stop hostage negotiators, psychologists, and other pundits to declare that she had done the wrong thing. The outcome was the best that could have been hoped for, but they still said it was wrong. On the other hand, attorney Mark Geragos decided that he would not allow his client Scott Peterson to take the witness stand in his own defense. Even after the verdict, many legal analysts agreed that Geragos had done the right thing. But the result was that his client received the death penalty!! There was no other outcome that could have been worse, but many still said it was the right thing to do. What can happen is that we get so wrapped up in what we know is the “right thing” that we lose sight of what actually happened. This might happen to you when a young salesman starts out by quoting your lowest price, but ends up getting the deal you didn’t think you could get. What do you do when the wrong method produces the best results? The “conventional wisdom” would say you should go back to doing it the old way. But maybe more time should be spent figuring out why the old way didn’t work this time.

What Do They See? - When I was out of town a while back, I had a 40-minute drive to my work site. For the southbound trip (going), I took one route. For the northbound trip (leaving), I took a different one. When I left on the last day, I took the same route as my “arrival” one. Amazingly, it seemed like about half of the scenery was new to me. Most of this wasn’t because I hadn’t noticed the buildings or the roads or the foliage. It was because my perspective was different. In your office, you have a single perspective – from your desk or your chair. Try taking the opposite route. Sit in your visitor’s chair. Is it comfortable? Is it higher or lower than your chair? What do you see? Is there a distraction behind you from the visitor’s perspective? Give this a try. The empathy for your visitors might improve your ability to interact with them.

Derailed – At my church, we are looking at small things that make a big difference. Most of the things we are talking about have a common requirement – discipline. What makes the discipline part even harder is that we tend to get derailed. It’s like you are on a diet for a few months and you are doing great and then the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays come along and not only do you get off your diet, you get off track completely – you get derailed. Maybe the problem is the goal. Instead of having a goal of losing 20 pounds, change it to a standard of maintaining a certain weight. Then, you can’t “go off” your diet for a while, because your standard stays forever. And by keeping track of the standards you create for yourself, it might be easier to keep from backsliding and faster to get “rerailed” if you need to.