The Sanford Berenberg Experience

502-533-9336

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Monday, November 3, 2008

Message of the Day - Your Opinion and You Matter

Good Morning,

Tomorrow is a day where your voice matters. It is a day where you can state your opinion and have your say with one simple action. No matter who wins, you still will have had your say and know that you participated. It is a day that you can say that you matter.

Voting is a powerful action, yet many decide not to take it.

There are many excuses, they do not like the candidates, they do not like the policies being suggested, or they are too busy, or have not registered, or add excuse here.

The society we live in is driven on the precept that our opinion matters and more importantly that we matter as individuals. When we vote, we share that opinion, and confirm to the world that we do matter.

When we choose not to vote, we give up that right. We become a coach potato in our own lives and that of the communities we live in.

When things happen that you do not like, if you have voted you can say that you did your part. If you chose not to vote, you give up your voice and say that others are more important than you because you let their opinion be heard when yours was not.

When you stifle your own opinion you make yourself a victim of the feelings and beliefs of others.

In the end, the outcome of these elections will change the country, state, county, town, etc., in some way or another, but will you be a silent victim or will you have empowered yourself and cast your ballot?

Ok, I am getting off my podium.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

502-533-9336

Friday, October 31, 2008

Message of the Day - Too Much Information Too Little Words to Express It All

Good Morning,

A great point pulled from ‘Make It Stick’ is that we often have a lot of information in our heads about many different subjects. Some folks have so much information that they are said to have forgotten more about a subject than most people know. That is a lot of information.

If we want to share this information with the uninitiated, then we have to decide what information in our arsenal (our mind) that we feel would best explain the topic at hand.

The challenge is that often the amount of words needed to give a subject justice, so that our audience gets it, may be more than we have the time to give. Or, more likely, if we are giving an ad hoc lesson to someone, we will often leave out bits and pieces that slip when we think through the steps of what we are sharing. This happens because in our attempt to formulate what to say, we think through the steps faster than we can say them, and in recounting each step, one or more gets overlooked.

To our audience, this information is flawed and confusing. Add to this that when we remember a step that we missed and throw it back into the mix, it can make a confusing conversation even more confusing.

The larger or more complex a concept we are trying to share, the greater the difficulty we will have in getting it across in its entirety.

One way to help bridge this gap between what is in our head and what we share with others is to either write it out, use training aides like PowerPoint or hand-outs or have our audience take notes and review those notes after you have finished, or have the audience repeat back to you what you have shared. Using prepared training aides also ensures that if you give this information multiple times, you will give close to the same if not the exact same message.

Like the telephone game where information gets all bollixed up, sharing information with others can be equally confusing if we try to just do a brain dump to our audience.

Too bad we cannot just save everything in our brain onto a thumb-drive and plug it into our audience. Then again, it’s probably better that we can’t.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

502-533-9336

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Message of the Day - Knowledge Trumps Position

Good Morning,

Continuing in my reading of ‘Made to Stick’ (http://www.madetostick.com/blog/) in the section called ‘Stories’ there was a story of a nurse in a hospital’s neonatal unit who saw a baby on a ventilator turn a bad shade of blue. When the medical team came, they started to treat the baby for a collapsed lung. The nurse’s gut told her it was something with the baby’s heart. She then told the Doctor who came in to treat the baby and handed him the tools for treating the heart and not the lung. It saved the baby’s life.

This nurse bucked the chain of command because she had better knowledge than the leadership at the top of the chain. This sounds almost like heresy in our world of organizations, but in reality it is just a change of perspective from another commonly used concept.

Leading from the front lines, or rather letting the front lines, or most experienced and knowledgeable person make the decision on a matter is common. Colin Powell leads this way, and so do many other great leaders who surround themselves with people smarter than they are.

Now that we have people who are better at a lot of what we do working for us, would we still see it as heresy for one of these people to trump our diagnosis of a situation with what they see with their greater experience and knowledge?

If we try to ‘pull rank’ when our best says we do not have the right answer and they feel they do, we can cause an awful lot of problems. First we are wasting a valuable resource in the people working for us. Second, we are telling those people that we don’t care that they know more, we are the boss. And most important, this demoralizes those key assets, in that they will less likely get us the correct information when we need it most and often will start looking to leave.

When we are the boss, the leader, the manager, we have to be able to defer to their greater knowledge and trust that making ourselves vulnerable to our team will not undermine the team. In most cases, it will have the opposite effect. The team will step up even more knowing that they are trusted and cared about.

Remember, knowledge often trumps position.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

502-533-9336

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Message of the Day - Remembering The Roots We Inherit

Good Morning,

This past evening I had the opportunity to attend the 15^th Anniversary Party for the Scottish Society of Louisville (www.scotsoflou.org). It was a well attended event. There were also many original members and early officers in attendance in addition to new members who signed up that night. I joined the society in 2004 and have been active with them for the last four years. During the meeting we heard from the past presidents in the organization who were in attendance and former board members as well.

Each shared stories from their time with the organization in years past. They talked about how the organization grew and changed, and how the policies and processes which we follow today were originally created. Activities that some members may take for granted today as having always been became more alive with their birth and growth. This started me thinking.

In our own lives, we are very familiar with how we came to where we are today, that is we know our roots. We can mostly remember our childhoods and what we experienced, learned and felt. These memories are often very dear to us because of this tie to the nostalgic.

The nostalgia often dies off or doesn’t even exist when we were not part of the roots of an event or organization. Like joining a company which was founded a few years before you were hired, or joining an organization founded years prior. What those companies or organizations do and how they came about doing them are their roots, but we seldom get sentimental about reading the history.

Although, when we hear that history from those who have been there and lived though these times, that history comes alive. Their passion makes the roots more meaningful and suddenly, we inherit new roots from the hearing someone share their experiences, knowing we are now a part of the story.

If you see an event or something that an organization does that you do not understand or have a hard time appreciating, then find someone who was there when it all started. If they are not around, try to find notes or anything or even listen to stories second hand. Find the passion that was involved back in early days of that event or organization and you will find a new appreciation for it as you now see yourself as part of it.

When you do, your inherited roots will become more than just words or actions, they will have meaning beyond them.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

502-533-9336

Monday, October 27, 2008

Message of the Day - Forced Prioritization

Good Morning,

My current read is Chip and Dan Heath’s book ‘Made To Stick’ (http://www.madetostick.com/blog/). The book covers how to make ideas last. It does this by comparing ideas that fail with those that have been around for eons and seeing what the difference between the two is.

The first section of the book is called ‘Simple’. This does not mean ‘dumbed down’, rather it means a very easy to understand and simplistic message. That is, short and meaningful and to the point. That is where the concept of forced prioritization comes up.

Forced prioritization is understanding that you have little time or a small space to get a message out so you need to make sure that what you send out is the most important information first. To make the most of your message, you package the core elements of your message in the first line or first paragraph of your message. This is used often by journalists and newscasters who know that they may not be able to get their full message out, or their audience may not wade through the entire message to get to the most meaningful part.

This is counterintuitive for the camp which likes to build up the message and after sufficient building, gives out the most important message. Some folks just don’t have time to wait for the ‘punchline’. If that is your audience, like your boss, or peers, then you have to find ways to shrink down your message to the basic most key part.

Here is a practical way of setting up your message: put what you want to say in a PowerPoint Slide with large font. If it can be read easily, you are fine. If you start getting lost in the words because there are over 100, then its time to trim it down.

Less is more with forced prioritization, but do not lose the central point of your message, and don’t bury it somewhere where the reader or listen has to search for it. Often it will not be found.

I look forward to other great tips from Made to Stick!

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

502-533-9336

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Message of the Day - Seeing the Future in Others

Good Morning,

When we look at others what do we see? Do we see the clothes, the make-up, the hair? Do we see the person underneath all of that? Or do we see what that person could become in the future?

I remember being told a story from a former VP from Yahoo back in 1999. The story was that one employee of Geocities, before it was acquired by Yahoo, who often showed up to work in torn jeans and t-shirts. They probably did not own a comb or brush, and the rest of the grooming was questionable. In today’s world, each of our companies would have something to say about this employee and how we would deal with them. One day, this person came to work with several crumpled napkins with writing on them. When he laid them out, it was the framework for publishing multiple web pages to the internet at the same time, something no one in the industry could do at the time. The idea became a Billion Dollar Idea and launched Geocities, and then helped Yahoo.

How many of us would not have given this person a chance? How many of us would have forced him to change his mode of dress and grooming (yeah, I would have too)? How many of us would have fired him? Look at that opportunity cost, losing billions of dollars because of making a judgment on how someone dressed…

Last night I attended a job fair at ITT Technical Institute here in Louisville. The students came in mostly on their breaks. Some of the students came in with dress shirts and ties, others came in with full suits, and others had t-shirts and jeans. Some were very well groomed and others looked like they walked in off the street for a free meal. Each walked around the tables to see the different companies and what they offered in future employment.

When these people came to our table, I tried looking at them not as who they were by the way they are dressed, or groomed themselves, but the spark in their eye, the way they spoke and how they carried themselves. Many were nervous and some were very outspoken. In each of these people there was a chance of something great in their future. It was up to them to seek it, and since each were students learning to improve themselves, each was on the right road.

Many of those people will be doing great things in the future. It is our job to help see that future and clear the path for them to achieve it.

How are you helping others become their future selves?

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg