While “change” is an opportunity in disguise (see last week’s blog), where it becomes a significant challenge is when the information or the data that you are counting on to be the baseline of conversations with a client suddenly, significantly, changes. Commitments made, facts presented, and known good information has been the cornerstone of conversations with our clients forever. We communicate deliveries, prices, dates, and critical steps in all things. We make commitments to our clients regularly. And our clients count on those commitments. All is ok….till it’s NOT.
One day the data fails us. The commitment that has been made is missed.
A “promise” to a client is broken. Not intentionally, but that is not important. The “facts” just changed and that has implications in many places. Everyone scrambles. We quickly search to see how it can all be fixed, now. In years gone by the world’s manufacturing systems had sufficient flex in them that they could most times quickly move to shift something around that would allow for a fairly quick recovery from the missed commitment. We would expedite, use things known as “hot lots”, and juggle transportation processes to accommodate a recovery mode that would in most cases cover everyone’s backside.
Well, along came the curse known as COVID. It started a chain of events that took us all down an extremely rapid and steep roller coaster that dropped demand, scared everyone, and left us standing flat-footed. Then the world turned an about-face and rocketed up with demand at levels never seen before. From all-new lows to all new highs. Bipolar disorder gone beserk!
Most “systems”…information, manufacturing, planning, scheduling, all of them…hit the wall. Our source of all of the sacred data was now, struggling to get it right. Our conversations with our clients were about to CHANGE, really CHANGE. Broken promises(commitments) were about to become the new normal. How were we supposed to handle this big difference? What were our conversations going to be based on?
Well, as we have found out now, as this challenged new “norm” has set in and we have been dealing with it, the conversations can be stressful, awkward, sometimes confrontational, and just not what we were all used to.
Our value in these conversations was once created, we believed, by the data that we brought to the party. That once truly reliable data, is now highly unstable, changing hourly sometimes, and even when conveyed, is likely to change again very soon. Now what?
Well, just as it actually was, when data was perceived king, our real value to our clients lays in our connection with them. YOU are the DIFFERENCE MAKERS in the relationships with our clients. Now our conversations, without great data, need to focus clearly on the understanding of the personal and professional challenges that our clients are facing in these times of broken data.
MASSIVE empathy is the reframe to our conversations and our relationships with those we serve. If you were empathic before, try 10X’ing that level. Put your heart and soul on the line, let it show that you professionally care about the person and their challenges. The data will always be part of the conversation, for sure. It just needs to be the second part of it all.
We must assume that our current state, of broken data, will reside for a long time to come. Only time will tell that to be a reality or not. In any case, the ONLY tool that you have at your immediate disposal is changing the personal connectivity level with those that we serve. Make it very real. It is your choice here, like always, to blame the data, or change the conversation. If you want to add value, we shift the dialog. It is a great joy to connect and serve. It is again the fundamentals of…
CARE greatly,
UNDERSTAND deeply,
SERVE endlessly, with
PURPOSE!
OK, LET’s ROLL!
It’s time to 10X the empathy in our lives.
Mitch
What once was old is new again… or is it?
Not that it needs saying again.. but I will… these are truly strange times. Here we sit in late July of 2021 and we are deeply engrossed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Did we really just hit “pause” and put parts of life in limbo? Looks that way. I love watching all things Olympic and every sport that I can watch. That part is not new and will never change. But none the less this shift in time, 2020 becomes 2021 actually, just adds to the strangeness of these rapidly, radically, changing times. But this too is NOT new!
In Sept/Oct of 1963 a very famous songwriter, Bob Dylan (for those that need learnin’ Google him) wrote a very telling song about the world around him then. The title is “The Times They Are a-Changin”. Dylan wrote the song as a deliberate attempt to create an anthem of change for the time, influenced by Irish and Scottish ballads. Dylan said "This was definitely a song with a purpose. It was influenced of course by the Irish and Scottish ballads ...' Come All Ye Bold Highway Men', 'Come All Ye Tender Hearted Maidens'. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close for a while and allied together at that time.”
The song is a bit of a “protest” song while it strives to transcend the political preoccupations of the time in which it was written. My favorite section of the song is its last verse….
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'
The song has “officially” been rerecorded 436 times and used in hundreds of productions of all sorts, including in January 1984, when a young Steve Jobs recited the second verse (Google this one too…) of "The Times They Are a-Changin'" in his opening of the 1984 Apple shareholders meeting, where he famously unveiled the Macintosh computer for the first time.
Less than a month after Dylan recorded the song, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. The next night, Dylan opened a concert with "The Times They Are a-Changin'"; he told biographer Anthony Scaduto, "I thought, 'Wow, how can I open with that song? I'll get rocks thrown at me.' But I had to sing it, my whole concert takes off from there. I know I had no understanding of anything. Something had just gone haywire in the country and they were applauding the song. And I couldn't understand why they were clapping, or why I wrote the song. I couldn't understand anything. For me, it was just insane.”
The TIMES they ARE a-Changin’……..
Over the nearly 6 decades since, one thing has remained particularly consistent and predictable…CHANGE! And it remains the prime catalyst for those that wish to maximize success in all of its elements. Change brings opportunity if you choose to use those glasses to see through. It brings other views, as you choose.
Within the little band of amazing folks that I have the absolute privilege to be a part of at Microchip we understand and honor this never-ending refocusing of viewpoints in such a way that we truly DO see opportunity where others see problems. No B.S., true stuff!!!! It is our choice to see through all of the daily challenges and potentially negative interactions and INTENTIONALLY CREATE goodness. Not magical. Takes a LOT of hard work. AND it is our choice! We choose to serve, serve in changing times, serve with diligence, passion, excellence, and caring! Because it is WHO we choose to be.
CUSP always guides us.
CARE greatly,
UNDERSTAND deeply,
SERVE endlessly, with
PURPOSE
OK, LET’S ROLE, quickly, as The Times They Are a-Changin!
Mitch
For a while there as we all relearned how to communicate effectively in a changed world we stepped aside from the expectations of our old metrics of funnel size, velocity, close rates, quote activity, leads, and all such blind measures of what we truly did, communicate. We stopped measuring the minutia that does not matter, never did. We worked hard to find the best new way to interface with all of the other “humans” around us. This took on a personal and professional persona shift that has been truly cathartic for most of us, even if we did not truly understand it. We learned to look people in the eye, even if it was now via video. We found that we really did need to shut up and listen as the new media format did not conform itself to everyone talking at once. We discovered a newfound respect for listening. The power brokers amongst us discovered that there was not as much greatness in dominating a video chat as there once was dominating a room full of folks. Sadly, I see us shifting back into old habits as we start to gather again in meeting rooms in the offices that we once held sacred. There appears to be a pent-up demand to “be heard”. And so it goes.
SO…it is time again to bring out the famous quote from Stephen Covey….
“Seek first to understand…then be understood”.
Our most powerful servant leadership role, our most potent servant provider role, our most critical role in any function is that of “inquirer”. Our most effective function in ANY discussion, at any level, with a client, a friend, a peer, someone that we report or that reports to us….is thru inquiry, enable them to reach their own outcome objectives. Guide their journey through understanding and deep inquiry.
If you REALLY care, this is the way you will communicate and relate to those around you everywhere, work, home, church, or school.
There is nothing as empowering as a natural sense of inquiry. Deeply wanting to understand and help others in their journey. Not b.s. management tactics, but true personal caring. Because if you attempt to lead or influence people from the “telling” mode, they will not hear you. They will nod, and perhaps even echo your words, and that will be all that you see, as you have not shown them that you truly CARE. CARING starts the success string to all that we do, with everyone that we choose to serve.
So how do you know if you care enough? Ask someone what caring looks like, sounds like, feels like to THEM! Then see if you measure up! Got the courage to ask?
OK, LET’s ROLL.
Mitch
Wanna fight?
One of the best modern minds in the subject of optimism is Martin Seligman. His simple books on the power of being positive will help us all find our way in strange and difficult times. One of his most profound research outcomes is the fundamental tenant that when people feel they have no control over their situation they tend to give up rather than fight for control. This is very true today in what we see around us regularly. There is a certain perspective that seems to be growing that says “I cannot change it, so why fight it”?
That acceptance of the inability to make a difference stops all creativity, effort, innovation, and brilliant outcomes. Failure comes from acceptance of that finality.
So we CHOOSE to ACT into SUCCESS.
What Mr. Seligman also showed us is that the reality is that we always DO have the ability to make a difference. If not in the specific outcome, but most certainly in how we CHOOSE to view that outcome and ACT into creation, how we ACT into innovation, and how we ACT into solutions that still matter. IT IS ALWAYS OUR CHOICE IN HOW WE ACT!
We can ALWAYS choose to find a way to make a difference, for the betterment of ALL.
That is simply a CHOICE we each make many times every day.
We choose ACT vs react. We choose to understand deeply so that our actions matter to all.
Regardless of the news, the data, the conversations, or the emotional pitch…look for a way to ACT into creation, innovation, kindness, and shared success.
It is in each of us, to make this intentional sense of optimism to break down the haze of this battle and regain the sense of control that providing value creates.
In the OLD days of television, there was a cigarette commercial whose graphic was a person with bruised/blackened eye…. The slogan beneath it was “I would rather FIGHT than switch”!
My hope for you is that your fight is strong and that we will never SWITCH from…
CARE greatly,
UNDERSTAND deeply,
SERVE endlessly, with
PURPOSE!
OK, LET’s ROLL! On with the fight!
Mitch
In a bit of a continuance from last week’s blog about what the brain cannot comprehend we will dip into a little bit of the other side of the story.
This thought is about how we DO engage the brain in the right direction with a little bit of simple redirection. This is not a tough concept to understand, AND yet, it is a tough concept to always execute.
The part of the brain called the amygdala, also called the lizard brain, is the very first part of the pathway that takes external inputs into our thinking system. It is keyed to one thing….FEAR. The fight, flight, freeze reaction is launched from here FIRST. So the first filter in our thinking system is built to look for problems, process a possible primary response, THEN think through things for a logical response.
Our first filter is actually looking at things that were described last week as “NO”.
From our own MCHP global team we were provided a couple of great examples of this. The first one is mountain biking.
Let’s set the vision. High in the mountains on a narrow rocky trail on a 30-degree decline, you are barreling downhill, barely in control. Ahead of you, there is a narrow pathway leading through boulders that are big enough to stop you in your tracks. One very normal thought would be “DON’T HIT THE ROCKS”. Sounds reasonable….except recall that the brain cannot process the DON'T part of that scream. Guess what…continue that thinking and you will soon become the next person airlifted off of that mountain to the nearest EMERGENCY room. I suspect that this mountain bike example came from valid experience.
The next example given by our team was that of a skier in the mountains, well off the trail, knee-deep in powder, and completely surrounded by HUGE trees on all sides. By now, we know….thinking “DON’T HIT THE TREES” will likely end up badly.
So we instead redirect our thinking, just like the answer to the trail bike story. We DO think… SEE THE PATH! See where you want to go, see what you want to do, see the outcome that you desire. This does not make it easy, or perfect, or foolproof. We are still human after all. But it DOES give us the BEST possible chance of getting to where we want to go.
SEE THE PATH!
Now expanding that thinking into serving our clients is actually quite easy.
Our client can clearly paint the picture for us of what success will look like at a high level. Make sure that picture is visually very clear to everyone involved. By project, by product, by issue, by every level of engagement that you can conceive of. Make that outcome VERY clear.
Then work into that vision. See every part of the path that will create success. Dig deeply into understanding what good looks like at every turn of the ride down that hill with the client. See the trees…come back to the PATH. Focus on the PATH.
From time to time a tree or boulder will get in our way. Bandage time! Then get up and see the new PATH. Never stop looking for the PATH, even in the toughest of times.
Alright, all you PATHFINDERS…. LET’s ROLL!
Mitch
