If the stakes are high enough and the duration you need to keep it together is short enough, can you control your response?
Because if we can do it then, we can learn to do it now. Acknowledging that it’s a choice is difficult, because choices come with responsibility. “I’m not a patient person,” is not the same as, “Being patient requires a lot of work for me.”
Attitudes are skills. Like all skills, they take practice, preparation and effort.
Here’s a list to get you started:
Empathy
Generosity
Kindness
Patience
Fairness
Gratitude
Forgiveness
Trust
Honesty
Humility
Self-awareness
Integrity
Accountability
Self-discipline
Equanimity
Self-compassion
Bravery
Persistence
Resilience
Consistency
Optimism
Adaptability
Acceptance
Grit
Curiosity
Open-mindedness
Discernment
Focus
Thoroughness
Initiative
Craftsmanship
Generosity of spirit
Service
Stewardship
Wonder
Responsibility
Dignity
Commitment
Presence
If we can learn them, even a little, they’re skills. Great news.
HT to Zig.
Danny Meyer and Will Guidara have each written fabulous books about hospitality.
They missed one thing.
The customers who get the most authentic and lasting hospitality are the ones who deserve it.
And the ones who deserve it actually enjoy it the most.
Extraordinary hospitality offers someone more human effort and delight than they expect.
You’re not entitled to something human simply because you paid for your ticket or your table. The kids who show up on Halloween get a piece of candy, but the ritual ends there. When someone with a great costume, or singing a song or simply creating a bit of connection or magic shows up, it’s different. That’s the one we remember, the reason we answered the door and our chance to show up and return the energy. Or even a full-sized ethical chocolate bar.
For too long, the entitled customer has demanded emotional labor without offering support or sustenance in return. It’s exhausting and unfair, for both parties.
When you’re the best customer we’ve had all day, it’s likely we’ll be the host you’re hoping for.
And the best part is, that no matter how it turns out, simply trying to be the best customer of the day is its own reward. We care because we can.
We don’t have written records, but I’m imagining that groups of cavemen made decisions around the fire in largely the same way we run sophisticated organizations today.
About a hundred years ago, three disciplines helped create the modern world:
Scientific management used a stopwatch and the assembly line to relentlessly improve the productivity of the industrial age.
Scientific advertising brought measurement and rigor to the work of creating ads and buying media.
And engineering brought physics and the scientific method to everything we build. Bridges don’t fall down, computer chips get faster and cheaper and the things we make rarely break.
But the bosses still do what they always did. They place comfort and convenience over effectiveness. If the hard-working people in any other part of the organization approached their work the way they do, it wouldn’t last.
One estimate is that the direct labor cost of time spent in meetings at a Fortune 500 company is over a quarter of a billion dollars a year. Per company.
And yet, meetings occur regularly, with no measurable outputs. Few people do the reading or prep, and many show up late or uninformed. The room isn’t designed for the purpose it’s being used for, and no one is taking notes or sending out follow-up action requests.
There’s rarely an interlocutor–a neutral moderator who asks questions, guides the conversation and leads the group to a decision. People are rarely given feedback on their meeting productivity, and aren’t encouraged to get training or improve their skills.
You’ve probably been to a thousand meetings. How many can you remember that achieved what could have happened with that much time and talent invested?
In my experience at large organizations, the physical dynamic in the room is often left to the facilities person who ran the AV cart in high school or the office supply vendor who was asked to fill a square room with furniture that would serve many purposes. That’s not how we invest in an assembly line or a semiconductor fab…
And many decisions, if implemented, remain unexamined. There’s little time or focus invested in learning from what came before, and no one is keeping track of whether the loud voices are usually right. Famous CEOs shoot from the hip, and seem to think that wrong action fast is better than thoughtfully doing the right thing tomorrow.
Corporate culture usually pushes people to avoid speaking up, to prize comfort over progress, and to support the status quo unless there’s an emergency. We either invite too many or not enough people into group decisions, and end up using superficial or extraneous information to make choices.
We reject a job applicant because they had parsley in their teeth, didn’t go to a famous college or they don’t look like us. Deniability often seems more important than progress. We use easy proxies and measures instead of the ones that really matter. And we repeat patterns that worked with the old systems, but make no sense with the new ones.
*The job of the Chief Decision Officer, then, isn’t to make decisions. It’s to create the conditions for the organization to do a better job of it. Not only at a Fortune 500 company, but at a thriving non-profit, a government agency or a small start-up.
Surgeons scrub before entering the OR. It’s hygienic, but also a ritual. It reminds them that this place is special, it has a purpose, rules and outcomes. Don’t come in if you’re not prepared to do your part.
The CDO ought to establish the same approach for the way we make decisions and take action on those decisions.
It often seems that everyone is talking about what everyone is talking about.
No one cares about a song or a movie or a political issue–and then they do. Then it’s everywhere.
But of course, that’s precisely why. Most people feel safe when they’re engaging within the expected social norms. It’s easier to fit in and to avoid an error. Or, if that’s your thing, it’s easier to stand out in contrast to everyone else who is trying to fit in. Either way, we’re always on the lookout for a bandwagon to hop on.
The media, in their relentless search for newsstand sales, clicks and likes, seek precisely the same thing. PT Barnum figured out that putting a marching band on a wagon at the front of the parade drew a crowd, and then Dan Rice, an actual clown, realized that politicians would be eager to ride on a wagon that had a crowd, which drew others to the crowd and the cycle continued.
The math is simple: you can’t bandwagon by yourself. The nature of bandwagoning means that it will always be overrepresented in any sampling of the media.
Just because someone organized a parade doesn’t mean you have to be in it.
I just built a page containing many of my books. Click on any one of them and it’ll take you to a directory of where you can get a copy. And the page then re-indexes based on which ones get the most clicks.
Thanks for reading.
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