Photo by Kyknoord 

At this point it’s pretty much a cliche that Change is hard.  What’s new is the scientific understanding of why it’s hard to change – and how that understanding can help make change occur.

Unfortunately for a small business owner, especially in today’s economic climate, change isn’t  just likely, it’s a near certainty.

It is not necessary to change, survival is not mandatory.     -W. Edwards Deming

However that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.  ~Woodrow Wilson

You will resist change, your clients and customers will resist change and probably most importantly, your employees will resist change.  It’s human nature, but that doesn’t mean you can’t overcome that resistance.

So what is this science?

I came across a couple of articles that explain (in quite a bit of depth) this relatively new scientific understanding.  The first one is the Neuroscience of Leadership from Strategy + Business magazine.

The other one is entitled Change Management – Understanding the Science of Change from CIO magazine (they use an example from Blue Cross Blue Shield here in Kansas City to make their point).

Both articles are pretty technical – lots of discussion on brain chemistry, neuroscience and Quantum Mechanics, but certainly worth the time if it’s something you’re interested in.  I’ll attempt to summarize here – but check out the sources.

Change is Pain

The bottom line is that your brain make-up and chemistry is designed to make routine actions (habits) easy and altering those habits difficult and even uncomfortable.

Think about when you’re driving your car along a route that you know really well.  Have you ever experienced a situation where you are driving and you suddenly realize that you don’t remember anything from the last 5 miles?

That’s because the thoughts and actions required for driving have ingrained into habits and you don’t need conscious thought to perform them.  You really are on ‘autopilot’.

Contrast that with the difficulty of driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road in England or Australia.  I had the chance to do that when I lived in Australia and although I eventually got used to it, I still remember the first couple of weeks of driving being very challenging and requiring a lot of concentration.

It turns out there are a lot of physical reasons why doing something new is uncomfortable, including the fact that your brain has a finite capacity of working memory (kind of like your computer’s RAM).  At a minimum it will make you uncomfortable and push you towards your old behavior.

Old School approaches to Change don’t work

I’m sure you’ve been in a situation where you were incented to change – either with a reward or a punishment, some behavior that you were doing.

Studies show that although this might have a short term effect, it generally isn’t effective for long term fundamental change.  Depending on how big the incentives or punishments are, you may get different behaviors, but they likely won’t fundamentally change the original issue.

As an example, in a corporate setting I once worked at, the leadership of the organization punished anyone that raised questions or doubts on the viability of projects that were being worked on, with the idea that they wanted ‘positive’ thinking throughout the organization.

The result?  People stopped bringing up concerns (at least publicly) and would sit back and watch as train wrecks developed rather than step up and try to handle things. 

Not exactly a great outcome for anyone.  Although this is probably a better example for poor leadership overall, the same type of outcome can occur in a more simplistic example of paying people a bonus to work longer hours to get something done.

People may work the longer hours, but my experience is that the overall productivity goes down and rarely do things get done more quickly.

So what does work?  Getting Buy In from the bottom up.

The explanation in the articles is pretty intense, getting into a fairly detailed description of an aspect of Quantum Mechanics, but the way I would describe what works is getting people to fundamentally understand – on their own – what the situation is and what needs to be done, and then reinforcing that understanding over a period of time in a positive manner to allow it to set as a new habit or pattern.

Although they don’t really describe it this way, my experience is that people will work much harder and smarter when they are part of the solution and have the opportunity to develop the details and the actions that need to be taken to address a problem then if they are dictated a solution and approach.

From a neuroscience perspective, this works because the brain is built to embrace insights and flashes of understanding, but they must be internally generated, you can’t force your answer or your thinking on someone else.

If you can make it their idea, then the change and the approach become much more likely.

However, they have to get their on their own and as a leader, you have to let them do it their way (within your parameters).

In addition to that insight – you have to continue to reinforce the learning.

A 1997 study of 31 public-sector managers by Baruch College researchers Gerald Olivero, K. Denise Bane, and Richard E. Kopelman found that a training program alone increased productivity 28 percent, but the addition of follow-up coaching to  the training increased productivity 88 percent.

A big part of the reason that coaching works is because it enables and encourages people to build new habits – overcoming the natural resistance over time.  Once that flash of inspiration has occurred, continued coaching and positive reminders of that insight need to reinforce the outcome.

In summary – here’s the recipe for organizational change:

1.  Clearly identify the problems or issues that you need to resolve.

2.  Let people come up with their own answers to the overall problem as a group.

3.  Focus on solutions – not problems.

4.  Reinforce, through coaching and positive mentoring, the actions and plans that the group came up with until you get the changed behavior.

It sounds overly simplistic, but when you’ve got neuroscience, Quantum Mechanics and biochemistry backing you up – I think you’re onto something.

What are your experiences with leading change (or being led)?  Share them here in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  www.aspirekc.com

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photo by BGLewandowski 

A friend of mine – we’ll call him Dave to protect the innocent, recently met with a local Online Marketing company to learn more about how to get started with online marketing – specifically email marketing (sending online newsletters to contacts that you know).

It turned out to be a scary encounter…

I wasn’t at the meeting (which is why I’m not naming names), but I did get a pretty clear breakdown of the conversation.  I checked out the company’s website and unfortunately I’ve seen plenty of other examples like this one that fall into the same category – companies that take advantage of small business owners that don’t know any better and try to sell them expensive solutions that they don’t need.

They walked Dave through their proposed solution and quoted a price of a few thousand dollars for up front design and a per mailing cost of a couple hundred dollars.  This is for the creation of an HTML and Graphics newsletter template that would be emailed out on a regular basis.  Their hook was that using eye-catching graphics and a customized look and feel would drive a significant spike of prospective clients to Dave’s door.

They asked Dave what he thought of the proposal.

Dave’s honest answer was that he had no idea if that was worthwhile or not.  He didn’t know enough about the subject in general to have a valid opinion (although he suspected that it was an expensive answer).

So here’s the problem – or problems…

Dave is a smart guy.  Dave is a successful business man with a lot of varied experiences in the marketplace that he works in and is a trusted advisor to a lot of people.

Dave is smart enough to know that it’s important for the longer term success of his business to start doing more online and to take an active approach to Online Marketing.

However…Dave doesn’t know anything about how Online Marketing works, what the options are, how to get started or what is a legitimate value added solution for his problems.

So the first problem is that this Online Marketing company:

• Didn’t ask Dave what he needed or why he needed it
• Didn’t ask what his budget was
• Didn’t understand that Dave needed educating before he could even think about buying
• Didn’t offer any sort of choices on what was possible out in the marketplace

The purpose of selling, if you’re doing it right, is to solve a customer’s problem, which implies that you have to first understand where the customer is coming from and what their problem really is.  I can’t say for sure, but I would guess that this company was more interested in selling their ‘solution’ than they were in solving Dave’s issues.

The second problem

The second problem with this scenario is the overall questionable value of the solution – regardless of who the buyer is.  Their email marketing solution offers things like personalization, list segmentation, tracking, SPAM filters, avoiding blacklists, feedback loops and bounce management and custom design for the email template.

Now I’m all for paying good money for quality design work.  If Dave’s company was larger and was up against several high tech competitors, then it might make sense to make the investment just for the unique design piece of it.

If that’s what you’re trying to do, then it’s worth it to spend good money for good design.

However if your issue, like Dave, is that you need a cost effective solution that will allow you to send a quality email newsletter with some customization to your list of contacts that’s at most a couple of thousand people.  Then $2000 or $3000 for up front design just doesn’t make any sense (not to mention $100+ for each mailing).

As a comparison to the service above, I know another company that offers extensive list management, industry best compliance and blacklisting measures, detailed reporting and tracking including bounce management, and several ways to easily customize your website to support online sign-up and maintenance for your prospects.

On top of that, this company offers over 300+ high quality HTML templates that are easily customized and the opportunity to develop brand new design for less than $600 if you need one.

Oh…and the cost is $15/month for a list of 500 names or less for unlimited mailings – going up to $30/month for up to 2500 contacts.

Constant Contact is a service that I use and would personally recommend, especially for anyone that’s fairly new to email marketing, their support and help is very good.  (By the way, if you’re interested in signing up with them, let me know and I can refer you and get us both 2 months free!).  iContact is a similar service that I’ve heard very good things about and it’s even a little cheaper than Constant Contact.

These are mainstream providers that are designed for businesses like Dave and they offer lots of proven capabilities at a very reasonable cost.

So what do you do to avoid the scary players?

For starters, try to get a little educated.  The blessing and the curse of the Internet is that there is an abundance of information out there – if you want to learn something, more than likely with some time and effort you can.

Secondly (start shameless plug here) you should come and check out my workshop on August 21st – How to Market Online.  It’s going to be a 2 hour discussion on 5 straightforward strategies that small business owners can adopt with manageable costs that fit their budget and start marketing effectively online.

The good news is that this isn’t as hard as it might seem (or as difficult as some companies like to make it sound…)!

I’d love to hear some feedback on experiences with Online Marketing – share them here or with me.

Shawn Kinkade  www.aspirekc.com

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It’s been going on since 1984 and every year it’s expanded to become bigger and better.

The focus of TED is to bring together interesting people and challenge them to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (give or take a few).

The gamut runs from inspirational to educational and instructive to entertaining and very funny.  Imagine being able to hear from some of the most interesting people in the world in 18 minute chunks – for free!

If you’ve never had a chance to check it out, it’s well worth spending some time to explore – you can find the starting place at TED.org.

Below is one of the more recent postings from a magician / mentalist named Keith Barry.  I had never heard of him, but based on the show he put on here, I’m sure we’ll all be hearing a lot more about him in the future – fantastic stuff!

Take a look:

If for some reason the embedded player doesn’t work, here’s a link to the video.

Share your comments here – I’d love to hear your thoughts on the arm twisting.

Shawn Kinkade www.aspirekc.com

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It could be during a heated conversation when you suddenly understand where the other person is coming from (and why they’re mad…) or sometimes you can ‘have the lights turned on’ when you’re listening to a particularly talented speaker.

It only took 15 pages into The Big Five for Life by John Strelecky for me to hit on a new way of looking at something.  This is a book that’s billed as a story about the greatest business leader to ever live and the ‘secret’ to his success.  It’s not a typical business book by any stretch, but there are a lot of ideas that a business owner could use to increase their success.

One of the things that I love about what I’m doing now is that I need to read a lot of books, specifically business books. 

• Many of them are extremely insightful and about as much fun to read as a statistics textbook. 
• Many of them are painful to read and not very insightful.
• A very few of them are both enjoyable to read and leave you with great ideas.

The Big Five For Life belongs in that last category – read on to find out why!

Leadership Versus Management

There are literally hundreds of books on leadership and on management and probably a few hundred more on either the combination of the two traits or the differences between them. 

My definition:  Leadership is about the ability to inspire others towards a goal or a vision, while management is about the skills to make sure that goal or vision can be reached.

So with that in mind, a major part of leadership is being able to develop, communicate and inspire people with a vision – or a Purpose For Existence, which is one of the key points out of this book. 

Every business should have a clearly defined, simple Purpose for Existence (PFE) and if that business wants to be successful, then it should ONLY employ people that share that Purpose for Existence in their own life.

It’s not a new or unique idea, but it’s also one that’s not commonly practiced.  The author makes a very compelling business case for why it’s important and how it can drive profits and growth up by 20% or more (statistics and good ideas…!).

Other key insights

There are probably a dozen key things I took away from this book – some of them reinforcing things that I already believed (but stating them in a new and different way) and some of them really challenging my experience with how things are done – especially in the corporate world.

As an example, you don’t have to look very hard to find someone that will agree that their company’s success is due to the people that work at that company, but how many business leaders actually develop a culture that rewards and enables those employees to achieve their own life goals?  (The Big Five for Life are the Five things that would make your life complete).

Imagine a company where:

• The employees love to work there
• They believe in what the company is doing and buy into the bigger picture (PFE)
• The company leadership incorporates the employees into solutions
• The company purposefully helps employees achieve their personal goals

What kind of productivity can you get from people that love what they’re doing and who they’re doing it with?  How much harder do you work on a pet project or hobby at home than you would for just a mundane work effort?  How much likely are you to stay on with that company in the long run?  It’s not about making people happy, but about the bottom line – about profits!

How would you go about creating that kind of company?

There are also some great ideas on increasing profitability, how to determine if it’s worthwhile to invest money in certain projects, ideas on how to grow your business beyond the initial business – the story narrative makes it easy to demonstrate a lot of these ideas in more of a real world setting.

Downside to the book?

As you can tell, I got a lot of positive things out of the book, but I did come away with sort of a wistful feeling that it wasn’t about the real world.  Although there obviously are excellent companies out there, there are unfortunately not very many of them that could really create what’s described here.  In other words, actually putting all of these ideas to work seems like it would require the World’s Greatest Business Leader to pull it off.

Having said that, if you could get inspired and use even a couple of these ideas, you would be well ahead of the majority of businesses out there.

What was the insight I had on page 15?

It’s an early discussion the primary character has with the business leader on why it’s important to not only do what you want to be doing, but to be doing it NOW (not some later point).

The average person lives 28,200 days (about 77 years).  

Imagine a history museum of your life, your 28,200 days with a display for every day of your life.  Would your museum show you doing things that were meaningful to you, things that you enjoyed and loved…or would 80% of your museum show you being miserable at work, hitting your head against the wall, generally hating life?

Powerful thought – isn’t it?

It was that clarification of the sense of urgency that we all feel at some point that made me stop reading and go ‘whoa’…!

Check this book out and share your comments here – I’d love to hear your thoughts about this and have someone to discuss it with.

Shawn Kinkade  www.aspirekc.comSimilar Posts:

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photo by MumbleyJoe 

Stand
In the place where you live
Now face north
Think about direction
Wonder why you haven’t before
Now stand
In the place where you work
Now face west
Think about the place where you live
Wonder why you haven’t before

REM – Stand

I had an interesting discussion today where the question was asked to me:

“If you could make $100,000 a year just for giving this type of presentation 5 times a week – would you be interested?”

(As a side note, this type of presentation was a reference to a network marketing type of product – I didn’t get all of the details, but it looked cleaner than some, but ultimately involved selling to friends, acquaintances and contacts).

Have you ever thought about what you do for a living and the money you make?

Just a guess, but if you’re like most people, you’ve at least considered it.

What would your answer to that question be?

Before I answered, I gave it some thought and…wait, I should back up just a bit and give some background…

What do you want to do?

I have probably spent more time on the topic of ‘What do you want to do with your life’ than most people.

By the way – great book on this topic is What Should I Do with My Life by Po Bronson.  He does a fascinating review of hundreds of people that have made significant life changes and presents dozens of them as individual case studies on how people have approached this issue and what their outcomes were.

The coolest part of the book is that although you can draw some broad conclusions, there’s more than enough diverse material to inspire lots of great discussions and thoughts.  It would have been much easier to lead to a simple conclusion (i.e. do what you love and the money will follow) but this paints a much more complete and realistic picture.

Anyway – as I was saying, I’ve given this a lot of thought in the last 4 or 5 years and although I haven’t reached any amazing epiphanies (one of the coolest words ever…!) or really even reached solid conclusions on what I should be doing, I have discovered a few guiding principles that I think are pretty important:

1.  Be yourself.

I’m sure this doesn’t qualify as groundbreaking news, but it is an important lesson that I wish I had really applied earlier in life.  I spent a fair amount of time doing things because I felt like I needed to chase an arbitrary definition of a career.

Don’t do that – figure out what’s important to you as a person and then figure out how to reflect that priority in what you do.  It’s about you, not your parents, your family, your friends, it has to be about you.

2.  Spend time with people you enjoy and that can help you grow.

I don’t think that I can overstate how important this is.

Life is way too short to spend any of it with people that bring you down.  People can do amazing things if they believe they can do amazing things – the importance of a positive mindset, some confidence and a little help along the way can make a huge difference.

If you suspect that you’re hanging out with people that are negative, try a new crowd for a while and see if your perspective improves.  If it’s you that’s negative, find some books, join some groups do something to get past that, because it’s poison.

3.  It’s never about the money.

This is the one that I really screwed up on.  It may not be true for everyone, but for me I’ve learned the hard way that it can’t be about the money.

As soon as it’s about the money, then everything else is going to fall by the wayside.  I’m not saying that money isn’t important, I’m saying that it can be the overriding reason for doing what you do.

Having said that, I know a lot of people that are content to get their time in and save their interests and passions for the weekends.  I did that for quite a while and it didn’t work for me.

So what would you say?

Back to the question at hand – I thought about it very briefly and answered “No. -  I wouldn’t be interested, even if the money was great and this really was a legitimate opportunity.” 

For where I’m at now, it’s more important to find something I can get excited about.  Yes I want to make money but the primary driver is doing something I believe in – and although I don’t have it all figured out just yet, I truly enjoy helping people grow their business and be more successful.

I think for most successful business owners, there has to be an element of interest / desire / passion lighting the way for where they want to go.  The hours are too long, the work is too hard if you don’t have some sort of guiding principle to keep you moving forward.

Could you trade that in for a steady paycheck and a lot less interesting (and less stressful) work?  Understandably it happens all the time.

What would you do if you were offered a job doing something uninspiring but paid well?  Share your thoughts here – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade    www.aspirekc.comSimilar Posts:

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