Once Cool, Always Cool? – I’m sure that there is something unique about you or your business and the natural inclination is to hang onto it because it makes you different and special. But a lot of times a fad catches on and some people don’t let it go when it’s over. Does your bow tie set you apart or do your mutton-chops sideburns make you look like a 70s reject? What about your company? Does your logo make people think your company “has a history of excellence” or “is stuck in the past?” Does your lobby make people think they are welcome or do they think they walked into a 1987 sitcom? We can get so accustomed to the things around us that we don’t realize the positive or negative impact they have on other people. Make a list of all of the things you haven’t changed in a long time. Then ask yourself if you could make any of them better. Maybe everything is good, but I bet that if you look around, replacing some of your now uncool relics could really improve things.

Looking Bad – One of my co-workers gave me a packet of material that was held together by a paper clip. The shiny finish had worn off the clip so it looked like a WWII holdover. I told her that she should throw out those substandard clips but she said she was keeping them because they work better. It was because the dull finish (where the shiny had worn off) didn’t slide off the paper as easily.


So make sure, when you are looking at possible solutions to a problem, that you don’t reject ones just because they don’t look so good on the surface.

The Lady Who Takes Care of Us – Several years ago I was at the NAMM show (a music industry trade show) and got guitar fever. The next day I went to a music store which happened to be one of our customers. As we talked, the store employee tried to remember the name of the person he dealt with at our company. He finally said, “You know, the lady who takes care of us!” We quickly agreed that the person was Margie, but the point is that people can be remembered for something other than their names.



So look around the office and try to imagine how others think of your employees. Jane? She’s the gatekeeper and makes it hard to talk to the boss. Bob? He’s the guy who always blames us for the problem. Betty? She’s the one who never returns our phone calls. Ted? He’s the guy that always calls us on the anniversary of our first order with you to see how we are doing. Now, what do they say about you? Try asking your people that question. Try asking your customers (internal, external, whatever) to do the same thing. It might be very enlightening to see what people are called when they aren’t called by their name.

Street Lights – As I was talking my lunchtime walk today, I noticed the streetlights. From their high vantage point, they cast their light across a wide area. It wouldn’t make sense to put them low to the ground. People wouldn’t be able to see as clearly. It’s the same thing with sharing your company’s (or department’s or club’s or church’s) visions and goals. Some leaders like to tell their lieutenants and let the message filter down that way. But the people at the end of the line are getting the vision from sidewalk mounted street lights. They don’t really get to see very much at all. Just like the street lights, you are highly placed in your organization. So the next time you need to get a message out, try to envision where the light has to come from. It might be you!

Like Clockwork – I have a crazy clock that works and doesn’t work. The second hand gets bound up between the 12 and the 3, works fine from the 3 to the 6, and then takes a big swoop from the 6 back to the 12. But the hours and minutes work fine!



Often times we expect projects, hobbies, careers, etc. to go like “clockwork” – tick, tock, with evenly measured steps and we get frustrated when it doesn’t go that way. What might be happening is that the little baby steps you are seeing now are setting the stage for the leaps and bounds that are about to come. If you look backwards, you might find that a lot of your progress has happened that way. And if you still think things should go like clockwork, maybe it’s like my crazy clock works.

Bad Becomes Good – In the 1980s, a group called Tommy Tutone had a hit song called “Jenny” which repeated Jenny’s phone number – 867-5309 – over and over again. At the time, everybody thought that it would be terrible to have that phone number because you would probably get endless calls from bored teenagers asking for Jenny.




I recently called a plumber, and believe it or not, his phone number was 867-5309. It’s a number I can’t forget. I already can’t recall the plumber’s name, but I remember his number! Today’s teenagers probably have never heard of this song so it’s unlikely that he gets many crank calls. This got me thinking about how many things that used to be “bad” are now “good.” For example, it used to be bad to call in sick to work. You were supposed to tough it out. Now, people are often discouraged from coming to work sick, because it ends up making other people sick as well. You might do an inventory of all of those things that you have know for years are bad, but if you look at them in different circumstances they might be good.

Pot Luck – How would you like to go to a pot luck dinner where everyone brought the same thing – like meatloaf? “Oh, have some meatloaf and let me get you some meatloaf to go with that. Would you like dessert? We have meatloaf.” That would be bland and boring. But some of you run your business or department like that. If you are a creative type, you hire only other creative people. If you are analytical, you hire more analytical people. Often you might say you do it because you want people to fit in and not upset the “group dynamics.” But many managers also feel uncomfortable hiring somebody with a different skill set (many times it’s because they will no longer know more than everybody else and that can be threatening). But if everyone in your department is just like you, you are serving meatloaf for dessert. If you hire people like you organize a pot luck dinner – everyone brings something different to the table – you reap more than the rewards of a well-planned meal.

Two Pots are Worse Than One - We have a little area at work where people can get coffee. It works on kind of an honor system where if you drink the last of the coffee you are supposed to start another pot. This works pretty well and coffee is usually either available or brewing. Then we started making two pots and the whole dynamic changed. Since we use carafes that we can’t see through, people use this as an excuse (in their own mind!) to not make more coffee. “I didn’t realize the second carafe was empty.” The point here is that the carafes are like responsibility. When there is one pot, the responsibility for making a new one is clear. And if one person is responsible for any task, that is clear. But when you make two people responsible for the same task (one or the other can do it), you might end up with no coffee. So, for best results, trying making only one pot of coffee and making only one person responsible.

Lack of Knowledge = Success – It seems unlikely, but what you don’t know can actually make you successful. If you look at some very successful people, the reason they are successful is that they leverage the talent that is available to them. They don’t know everything but they have access to people who do. With this type of thinking, if you are just using you own knowledge to succeed, you will absolutely fall short of what you could have achieved. So try and calculate your combined knowledge. Write down what you know and are expert at and also write down the knowledge that you actually have access to, meaning that you can use that expertise in real time. Do this now and see where the gaps are, then try to fill in the gaps. Then do the same exercise six months from now. I bet that as your combined knowledge grows, so will your success.

Better/Worse Charts – We all track a lot of things in our businesses, but we usually compare to a certain measurement like the annual budget or industry benchmarks. So sales might be 40% over budget three months ago, then 30% over, then 20% over. Sounds great, right? Often you will only look at the data one month at a time. 20% better than budget is good. But what if you had “Better or Worse” charts? Just a simple up or down. Did things get better or did they get worse? That 20% would show up as “Worse.” And so would the 30%, by the way. Why would you make someone look bad if they were 20% or 30% better than budget? It’s not about looking good or bad, it’s about looking at things differently. Maybe the budget was too easy or maybe the person will have one blowout month and then coast for three months. And just maybe having a completely different type of measurement will give you a completely different insight!