Time to change? Maybe not!

It is said that change is inevitable. Not my place to argue that philosophical point, but considering our world today it is a reasonable hypothesis. Change on its own can have multiple dimensions from good to bad. If we are to grow and prosper in a changing environment we must convert simple change into evolution for advancement. A concept that conveys that direction is “continuous improvement (C.I.)”. A never-ending path of change that creates outcomes that are better than their predecessors. What once was great becomes outmoded and improved upon, with a never-ending loop of that circle of actions and outcomes.

While evolving for goodness sake in the C.I. loop it is essential that we always stay focused on the values that we treasure. Process and people changes at all levels ARE inevitable. We see it daily. We choose how we respond to it daily. Our choice must be that our values of service to others never falter. Our focus on making a difference in the lives of others is key to keeping us different and of high value to the world around us. Parts and products are the wares of our trade. Creative thinking is the tool behind the magic that we co-create with our clients, our team, our family… our friends.

Purpose drives us. Understanding guides us. Service is the “doing”. All because we care greatly about those people that we choose to serve.

Work done without a purpose creates no true value for anyone!

So when purveyors of new ideas come forward with grand directions and change in thinking we welcome it and we stop and look for the C.I. and look to see who it serves. The highest level of greatness is created when it serves others first! What is the purpose of what we are looking to do?

So when you tie this to the question of a week ago…” what problem are you trying to solve?”, you get the rest of the story. And that is an understanding of its C.I. nature, or not, and its purpose perspective.

So here can be a triple header of questions about the change in front of you…

- Is it really continuous improvement?

- What is its true purpose?

- How does it serve others first?

This will make for an interesting client conversation about their view of their challenges and “changes”. It will continue to make a great conversation with our teams and how we engage with our clients to maximize our value to them as well.

To twist an old phrase a bit…. “VIVA la EVOLUTION!!”

OK, LET’s ROLL!

Mitch

No…. really, what problem are we trying to solve?

A lot of times we find ourselves getting distracted from the bigger picture and the challenge that matters the most. We start with great intentions, work hard to frame the challenge, and MANY times we get sidetracked with what may be more easily measured, driven, and controlled. We are suckers for measurable actions, even though they may not drive the bigger outcome. We are process junkies, and that is NOT wrong!

In corporate life, we all gather in groups, brainstorm ideas, and settle on the answer to “what problem are we trying to solve”. You will hear that over and over, even while we are taking steps in a sideways direction rather than head-on towards the more critical objective. It’s pretty easy to get caught up in well-meaning groupthink.

Tie the “what problem are we trying to solve” question directly into a cause and effect element that drives one of your (personal, corporate, client) strategic objectives and you will keep it on track more easily. Even then we must still be honest to the question of “what problem are we trying to solve”. Keep it real and keep it focused for this set of actions.

There is an old term that still works well when tackling the early definition of this, whether it be an internal corporate issue or a client issue. From the early days of “sale processes” came the term, with derivatives, of FAA (fix, accomplish, avoid). At an appropriate time in the client engagement, which is not early on, one of the questions worth tabling is Dear client… what is the company looking to fix, accomplish, or avoid (with a modifier something like.. in these current resource constrained times).

With the FAA perspective in mind, you will find yourself working in a higher level of client interaction than product, pricing, and delivery issues. All this comes back to the focus that we all must have at this moment, and that is our client actions need to be aimed at innovation and new creation, rather than alternate sourcing actions. The latter can be time sync leading to very little if we let it. Our, choice….where and how we engage with clients!

An age-old adage… all clients need the appropriate level of support. How we do that is in our hands. And how we do that to the max is vital to how we each differentiate ourselves.

So back to the beginning, with FAA in mind… what are we (us and our clients) really trying to DO, corporately and personally?

So let’s go DO IT!

OK, LET’S ROLL!
With CUSP at heart!

Mitch

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