If you are grateful, show it!
Don’t waste the chance to tell the world thank you!

It has been a strangely eventful week this week. Sunday has topped off many of the elements where we have watched people and teams compete, win and lose, and always be grateful.

The list of strange and grateful includes the last week of recovery from knee replacement surgery that was done about 10 days ago. The recovery has been amazingly great. Never stopped walking and yesterday started up gentle workouts on the elliptical. The week included 5 time a day workouts (non-elliptical) and connection to my own little icing machine several times each day. The word grateful does not do justice to the wonderful help that the little machine could provide to the left knee. Cold has never felt that good. However, on Thursday night the vacuum pump bandage system kind of gave way. So Friday morning the doctor was contacted and it was established that a 3:30 appointment would work to see what needed to be done.

Even more grateful for the medical team. The day-long work activity that was set for Friday now had to stop a couple of hours before it was done. That was ok with all involved, considering the situation. Now grateful to the business teams that were working on complex issues. ALL people can create gratefulness given the chance.

Made the 3:30 appointment a bit early and was greeted by the doctor and nurse that had done the surgery (remember this is 3:30 on a Friday afternoon. Best news of all that day. The incision was so well recovered that they chose to NOT put the complex vacuum pump bandage back in place and instead chose to just seal it up a bit with small little adhesive strips. At this point, GRATEFULNESS is overflowing as the trip home takes place.

Over the weekend many examples of the power of being grateful play out in front of me. Sunday has been full of such examples. A Formula One race took place in Russia, Lewis Hamilton won that race (it was his 100th win, so nothing new here). However, the reason he won that race was due to a single decision that his pit team had made, and he did not agree with but executed anyhow. He won that race because of his team’s decision. And he acknowledged that and was truly GRATEFUL. In another race of the day in the INDYCAR championship, there was a first-ever Spanish driver winning the series championship. Watching him, you can tell that his nature was one of being truly grateful for all of the people in his life that had believed in him and helped in achieve his goals, from go-carts to winning one of the hardest to win championships anywhere

The golf Ryder Cup (Europe vs USA) was contested over the last few days, and in this case, the USA team dominated the Eu team. That has not always been the case, and in this case, you can hear an amazing amount of gratefulness from ALL of the players on both teams for the opportunity to help their team compete.

To end up Sunday there is about to be a NASCAR race take place on TV from Las Vegas. I KNOW the nature of those drivers and teams. You will see fierce competition and everyone working their tail ends off. AND being grateful to be able to participate in that sport at that level.

Long story, short question, and action to take. Let’s see if you have the courage to tackle this one.

Question: WHO are you most grateful for in your client base? WHY?

Action to take…. FIND someone in each client that you are grateful for and TELL them NOW!

OK, LET’S ROLL…. Sharing our gratefulness openly! You will be amazed at what you learn!

Mitch Little

p.s. want to double the challenge… do the same thing at home…..

Care because it matters, your difference MAKES a difference!

Below is an internal message that I sent out this week to our WW Client Engagement team. I typically send out one of these each week and have been doing so for a LONG time. This one is a bit different and specific to an experience that I had this week. My perspective in sharing this with a larger audience is to show that a focus on helping our clients serve THEIR clients is the best focus to have, and its effects have an extraordinary reach that goes full circle.

As I say at the end….

OK, LET’S ROLL… serving endlessly!
Mitch

To the WW Client Engagement team:

Over the past MANY years I have written to you about our ability to “make a difference” in people’s lives, and that core value being the guiding light that moves us each day. Well, this week I had the privilege of experiencing YOUR efforts, thru many of your clients, as they made a difference in MY life. As I explain, my thanks go to you!

This week I had a partial knee replacement in my left knee. A reasonably major surgery, that has become pretty routine. My experience became strangely focused as I entered into the pre-operation prep area and started getting hooked up to about a dozen different pieces of analytical equipment and I started to recognize every name on each piece of equipment as one of our clients. I sat down on an automated bed that was made by a client, that was warmed or cooled to my desire as well as positioned by the nurse with a bedside remote. I was hooked up to a heart rate monitor, a blood pressure monitor, and various sensors attached to my leg. Every one of those machines had names that I have seen for years on our list of clients. The television that was swung over for me to fiddle with while I waited was another brand we know all well. The experience continued even post-operation.

With about a 6-inch incision straight over the top of the knee, it has some challenges of quick healing I am told. Well, there is a new product called a PICO VAC that is a negative pressure (vacuum) sealed bandage that has a vacuum pump attached to it that goes over the entire area and it draws out any “bad” stuff into the bandage. This electronic vacuum pump is of course battery powered for the 12 days that I wear it and it is said to reduce healing time by more than 75%. It has sensors that tell me when things go weird or need batteries. I’m not sure about whether this one is a client or not, but in about 10 days I will take it apart and we will make sure that they become one! In addition, I am hooked up to my own little personal ice “cool box” that circulates cold water around my knee several times a day. This was another brand name that I know is a client.

An amazing journey around all the good things that you and your global teammates have done over the years in helping our clients make a difference for their clients (including us all).

YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

Each and every day we help our clients serve the world in ways that make a profound difference to humankind. Whether it is a small little micro that moves the pumps in small things, or whether it is big pieces of silicon that help us communicate or keep us safe as we drive. It all matters, greatly!

We don’t sell stuff. We help our clients make a difference in the world around us in thousands of different and meaningful ways.

So take pride in that fact. This is not a perfect world and our challenges in it are many. As we face those challenges stand tall in knowing the YOU and all of your team around the entire world are working diligently each and every day to positively affect humanity in profound ways.

You made a BIG difference to me this week on a very personal note. My thanks to all of you for your help with ‘fixing my knee”!

So, please, keep the CUSP alive. It makes a difference in the world because YOU care.

OK, LET’S ROLL!

Mitch

The picture below shows the “chrome titanium” inserts with a high-tech polycarbonate plate between them. I will now no longer pass thru metal detectors so easily.

Dragons and tigers… oh my!

A small secret, only known to a few hundred people, is that I am a fan of tattoos. Which means I have several..well make that many. It started about 25+ years ago when I was looking for something to remind me each day of the challenge that I had taken on some time before that. That challenge was that I would MAKE A DIFFERENCE for someone, in some way, every day! That commitment to my focus manifested itself in the form of a very colorful dragon on my right calf. It seems that I was also born in the year of the dragon and that mystical beast represents a part of the circle of the balance of power within ourselves. Above that dragon are the bold and colorful words… MAKE A DIFFERENCE. This is meant to act as a reminder to me and to invoke dialog with others. In the YinYang balance of life, the dragon is seen to represent the spiritual part of things while its counterpart is the tiger that represents the earthly part. So as time has marched on I now have 3 dragons on my right leg and 3 tigers on my left leg. From that perspective I am balanced.

Way too much about me…. Just setting the picture. It’s MAKE A DIFFERENCE that we need to dig into. We have talked about this many times over the years and the obvious reality is that this critical element of human engagement is needed more now than ever, and appreciated more now than ever. The daily negative stress of the business engagement in today’s world is driving many to new levels of frustration and pullback from client engagement. Understandably as the outward styles deployed, knowingly or unknowingly, by many in the vice of “problems” are confrontational and threatening. The position that their own leadership team puts them in is at the root of this disfunction. And it’s hard to alter as those methods HAD been successful for a few decades. THEY ARE NOT NOW!

New times… new thoughts… new actions!

The thought that precedes the action needs to alter. While we are deep into the tactical part of a client engagement and things look bleak, we have to step back and ask the question behind the question. What can we do with this client to help them MAKE A DIFFERENCE for THEIR client! Step away from the delivery problem, technical issue, or price discussion, and put yourself in their personal shoes and ASK them…” beyond this issue that we will continue to work on, what can we do TOGETHER that will make a difference to the clients that you serve”. Now in reality these may be internal clients or external clients. BOTH are critical.

Think that thought, you ARE in control of your own mind! Then use those words and ask that question. Be bold, CARE to be different so that you will find a way to MAKE A DIFFERENCE with the person that you are working so deeply with.

An interesting side perspective of all this is that when you are helping others you will find that you feel better yourself. Doing good for others does good for everyone!

We MAKE A DIFFERENCE because we…

CARE greatly,
UNDERSTAND deeply,
SERVE endlessly, with
PURPOSE!

Take time each day, on every call, with every conversation, to look for that chance, that opening, that door that will help you help others. It is a very magical entryway.

OK, LET’S ROLL!

Mitch

The answer would seemingly be yes…it’s tough to communicate clearly with others…especially when you aren’t clear in your own head about what you wish to convey.

The various challenges in a conversation look like this…

- This is what I meant…
- This is what I said…
- This is what was heard…
- This is what was understood…

That can generate dozens of different outcomes from what was intended. AND how do you know? Ask your significant other about a complex conversation you had the other day and tackle each of the 4 elements noted above. See how far you might have been from where you thought you ended up at. Be honest, open, and candid, and I believe you will be surprised.

So you can imagine how complex this all gets with clients that in most cases really are not even interested in hearing what you have to say, no less even attempting to understand what they think you thought you meant to say but really did not…get the circle here?

This all comes down to how do you get another person’s attention long enough to get them curious enough to actually hear you? Seems extremely difficult and complex. A lot of psychological nuances (say what?)…never mind. It seems tough. It is NOT!

It’s simple. In reality, most of the time, humans will only HEAR and UNDERSTAND what another person says when it interests, affects, or is about the “listener” directly. Don’t believe me, try having a conversation with the teenager in your house about most anything that you find interesting and see if you get more than a blank stare. Don’t fudge now and make it about video games or social media.

Over the last, going on 2 years now, we have embraced and learned huge lessons of the value of engaging with others. Our non-face-to-face mode has moved us to an understanding level that is really quite remarkable and very valuable to all involved. We have learned about conversations that matter to others most, and the goodness behind that. We have learned to focus our conversations outwardly. We have evolved in ways that we would not have tackled otherwise. And it is a GREAT thing. As we move forward into process evolution from where we are the greatness can remain if we choose to embody it. It is not face-to-face or video-based. It is human-based. As I have said before we do NOT have a SALES process. We have a HUMAN process of communication, understanding, and service. Build that into the CRMs of the world. Not software or hardware, but human ware!

Thoughts matter. Words matter. Actions matter. Make them all HUMAN and make them all clear, and make them all count. Your choice! It’s actually EASY!

OK, LET’S ROLL!

Mitch

Which way will we go? Does it matter?

With the continual drumbeat of negative Covid news and challenges, you may find yourself a bit confused. Understandably. However, in the haze of dealing through the unknown, we may actually create a hesitancy to fully engage with our clients. I am starting to see a bit of that creep in and we MUST shift our thinking quickly so that our actions follow suit.

With supply chain challenges compounded by new product introduction schedules slipping heavily it sometimes just feels like our clients and ourselves just cannot catch a good break. Well, we don’t need luck on our side, we make the outcomes we desire happen…intentionally!

So, with Covid challenges expanding, potentials of lockdowns returning, and all of the dialog about masks and vaccines, what DO we do?’

That answer is pretty simple. We don’t care whether we are serving our clients face to face or video to video! We do NOT use either dynamic to alter our service to our clients. The entire client engagement industry (once known as “sales”) has just spent the last 18 months developing and fine-tuning a process of client engagement that is in fact independent of the form of communication that takes place. We know that to serve well, we must communicate very well, and to do that needs LOTS of well understood and targeted effort. The reality is that this was always the case, we just believed that a face-to-face meeting would suffice for proper in-depth planning. 30-40 years of that experience had us “confused” about how to do the job the very best.

Our last many months have proven to us that we can deliver even higher quality service to our clients than we EVER have. They have told us all that directly, and we, of course, believe them! So, we do not care what curve the world throws at us, we now know how to shift our thinking (SHIFTABILTY) and find even better answers than we had been seeing before.

Purpose wins out. Serving prevails. We can’t be kept from helping our clients achieve their own objectives. With that simple holistic focus, you all will overcome every obstacle thrown at you! Simple, yes, easy, no! Takes constant diligence to not let the obstacles thrown at you continually, get you down. It comes back to the basics….ALWAYS!

CARE greatly,
UNDERSTAND deeply,
SERVE endlessly, with
PURPOSE!

OK.. no hesitation, no doubt… LET’S ROLL!

Mitch