Connecting Always Requires Energy

Chapter 4 of Dr. John Maxwell's new book, Everyone Communicates, Few Connect is now available on his blog. Catch it before it's too late. After reading thru the chapter, I've posted this comment on the blog.

They Get Out Of It What You Put In

It was my very first time to do a presentation for a group of IT professionals in Ottawa, Canada and I have decided to apply what I have learned from the previous presentations I did - PowerPoint slides were well thought out taking me at least 3 weeks to complete, writing a thorough story line as part of the delivery, and incorporating all of that to drive home the message. Add to that the methodology and delivery - burning with passion and excitement that the audience was always anticipating what I'm about to say. After the presentation, one person approached me and said, "I think you have raised the bar for delivering technical presentations." Not only did they learn so much from the presentation but they have appreciated the effort that went into it. One presenter even attempted to imitate what I have done and commented that he now understands the amount of work needed to come up with a great presentation. From preparation to delivery to evaluation - it takes a tremendous amount of energy.

Connecting Requires Selflessness . . . Give

A common pitfall for every speaker and presenter is the "know it all" attitude who feels that what he has to say is of utmost importance and that everybody should listen. I also fall prey into that - I guess we all do. What's worse is that I see a lot of presenters simply do it to get recognized, be admired and feed off the ego that he knows a lot better than anybody else.

I was reminded of having the attitude of giving and humility whenever doing presentations or conducting a speech. The audience will really feel the sincerity and will shift into "receiving mode," willing to accept whatever the speaker has to give. The goal is always to "put the audience first." That in itself is a sign of humility.

Connecting Goes Beyond Words

I have been out of the blogosphere for quite some time due to a lot of work but I guess my Twitter updates have complemented the lack of blog posts. I'm thankful I did Twitter two months ago

Since I have been following Dr. John Maxwell on Twitter, I saw this post about the new book he's working on entitled Everyone Communicates, Few Connect. The chapters are being offered on his blog for a few days and then taken down being replaced with a summary of the chapter. I'm just not checking on my Twitter and blog regularly that I missed the first two chapters. At least I managed to catch the third chapter. I've posted a comment on the blog and it's what the content of this blog post is all about.

"This is my first encounter with the chapters for the book and all I can say is that this has hit a home run. Having been invited to do technical presentations for Microsoft technologies both locally and globally, I know what it means to sit in a presentation with boring PowerPoint slides, bullet points that can kill and listen to a speaker that probably memorized the transcript of the presentation. I have been guilty of doing this myself as I initially thought that this was the way to do technical presentations. Ever since I have learned about the art of delivering presentations, I have committed myself to continuous development on the subject – from creating great PowerPoint slides to delivering the presentation (special mention to great books like Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds, slide:ology by Nancy Duarte and Working the Room by Nick Morgan).

From experience, I have learned that enthusiasm, emotional and visual connection when delivering a presentation is what makes people want to stay and listen more – even for a highly technical and boring presentation. The reason I get invited to do presentations was not because of the level of content I provide other (other speakers are smarter and have more technical knowledge than I do) but because I was able to connect to the audience, understand what they feel and provide a solution using the technologies I am presenting. It’s hard to be an expert in just one aspect of technology especially when it keeps evolving and this is what I have learned when delivering presentations. It’s hard to be an expert at what you will present on. But what makes you as one when you deliver your presentation is the passion and enthusiasm that come with it during the preparation and delivery. Anybody can deliver presentations on just about any topic they may or may not be expert on. The only difference in making it an effective one is to put yourself in the listener’s shoes, feel what they feel and develop and deliver a presentation based on that.

Bottom line:It’s all about the listener when we communicate."

If It Aint Broken, Don't Fix It. But If It Is...

A common expression in IT is "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" as it is important to keep a consistent experience in the infrastructure - staff get's to send emails on time, they get to access their sales documents on the portal, etc. But what if it is broken? We fix it. The mail server went down, we get a severity one alert to "immediately" resolve the issue together with an email from the CEO saying email is of primary importance in the organization.

I wonder why so many organizations don't do so. They see a business process that doesn't work, a work environment that does not foster creativity, or a marketing campaign that does not bring results - they're just simply broken. Yet management still expects to see better results. W.L. Bateman highlights this in a very popular quote, "If you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep on getting what you've always got." If it's broken, you've just got to fix it

I saw this video of Seth Godin's presentation at Gel 2006 which somehow highlights what this means.

Why Likeability Affects Service Delivery

Tim Sanders in his book The Likeability Factor emphasizes the need to improve one's likeability in order to be successful. He cited several studies that prove how likeability affects your job, the judge's decision in a court hearing and what not. What's fascinating is that we see this in action in just about any interaction we engage in or see every day. How many times have you screamed at a clerk in a store because of a defective product only to see other complaining customers get serviced ahead of you? Likeability kicks in and you just blew it.

Having to deal with customers as part of my job, I sometimes get tempted to deal with them based on likeability. One incident occurred when an arrogant customer was requesting for an issue to be resolved immediately. Sure, we all wanted to keep customers happy to make them stay. But likeability proved to be right when I have assigned the task to somebody else instead of me doing it. Not because I can't do it but simply because it would be counterproductive doing the work to solve the issue while at the same time having to deal with an arrogant customer.

Now there are two ways to deal with this (especially if they are your customers) but I doubt most people will chose both. One is to stay away from people whose likeability just hits the floor so as not to be affected by it. The other is to make them happy while pinpointing their character flaw. There's always a nice way to say something not nice. It's risky to do the latter especially when you try to keep business as purely business. But it does have some benefits. Having the customer realize that you are concerned with their overall welfare and not just their money as part of the business will make them long-time, committed customers. The choice is totally up to you to make.

Making Social Networking Work

While I am not an avid fan of social networking, its a fact that even businesses use it for their advantage - hiring people, getting potential business contacts, marketing, etc. Many people just use it for fun while others are reaping the benefits of maximizing their use. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to name a few of these social networking sites have become popular due to increased usage. In fact, even Pizza Hut hired a "Twintern" to promote their brand to their Twitter followers. While it has become a hype, making it work for you requires a lot of work. An article in NetworkWorld highlights 10 keys for making social networking work for your advantage. One thing I learned thoughout my experience with people is that whatever works with them works in just about any media. Think about it. Do you remember your classmates from decades ago unless you've initiated contact with them on a regular basis? What about the very first job you had? Do the people still remember who you are? How did you know about your current job? It's all about others - not you. If you jump into the social networking bandwagon thinking you want to be connected to others, first, think about what's in it for them. I see a lot of posts on these sites promoting products and services without even reading the code of conduct on the usage of the service. A lot of people find this pretty annoying and, hence, simply ignore them. But when people find out that you are there to help them out, they bring down their barriers and are more open to what you have to offer or your need.

Bottom line - if you want social networking to work for you, remember that it is not about you

The Customer is King vs Doing the Right Thing

Most of the service-oriented businesses these days know that the customer is always the king. This means doing everything they can at their disposal to make sure that their customers would be more than satisfied with their goods and services even to the extent of simply yielding to the customers' irrational requests. Having worked for service-oriented organizations where customers pay by man-hours or man-days (even man-minutes), I've heard of customers' requests to cut corners just to save time on projects and implementations which, of course, saves on consulting fees. Anybody who'd like to keep the customer happy would simply yield to such requests without thinking of the repercussions in the long run. As service providers, customers expect us to provide a high level of service and trusts us to make decisions for them. While saving the customer a few thousand dollars might make them happy for now, imagine what could happen down the road. For example, imagine you're a security consultant that charges on a per-man-day rate and that the customer saw the breakdown of your quote. Since they want to cut down on cost, they figured they can simply drop some of the services you are offering and just go with the "least" acceptable proposal. Now, as a security consultant, you know the risks of not implementing your entire suite of solutions but wouldn't want the customer to simply walk away without signing the contract. What would you do?

Compassionate Capitalism as some may call it

In a world where capitalism focuses more on profits and revenues, others may think making a difference is totally out of the picture. I was reading about TOMS Shoes and how the company started out as Blake Mycoskie, Chief Shoe Giver, wanted to help children from developing countries by providing them shoes to wear. Their motto: "One for one." His company would match every pair of shoes sold with a pair given to a child in need. Talk about real and authentic corporate social responsibility. I was reading more about TOMS Shoes and how it garnered a lot of media coverage, one being the AT&T ad featuring TOMS Shoes while they do their shoe drop activity. What's really amazing is the fact that the business model is built on the concept of compassionate capitalism where their vision is primarily what sustains the business. His explanation on the CGI U meeting with President Bill Clinton highlights that even during this time of ecenomic crisis, they have sold three times as much in the same month as compared to last year.

TOMS story is a testimony of compassionate capitalism at work and how organizations should think about their impact in society. More than just the leader's vision of growing the organization to greater heights, couple that with being socially responsible is how we can create a sustainable environment and make this world a better place to live in.

When Making a Contribution Is Better Than Doing Well

We all love to be noticed, affirmed, adored - name it. Its human nature. But sometimes, what prevents us from really performing at our peak is the fact that we want to do a really great job. You want to be the best secretary, the best office administrator, the best computer programmer and we want people to see it. Now there is really nothing wrong with that. But what if we, even for a minute, shifted our focus from doing really great at work to making a difference. Wouldn't that change our perspective? Imagine this, instead of being the best office clerk, what about focusing to make a difference in your organization because what you're doing will help someone else make their jobs a lot easier. Or maybe this, instead of being the best database engineer for a healthcare company, think about how your job helps decision makes recommend the best alternative for keeping healthcare costs down for a lot of people. It's not just being the best at what you can do that makes you become exceptional but finding meaning and purpose in what you do every single day.

Injecting humor in your presentations

I like funny people because they keep the atmosphere light. This is very important when dealing with highly controversial issues, particularly those of the government. I was watching White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs deliver his briefing on CNN and was amazed at how he tried to inject humor into the atmosphere. He started with informal comments about the TV series Chuck and went on to proceed with the briefing. What's fascinating was when one of the audience asked him about the comments of a Wall Street analyst about Obama's financial stimulus plan, he went on recommending to read the plan carefully and analyze, commenting that he would even invite the analyst for a cup of coffee at the White House adding "decaf" at the end of the comment. The entire room burst in laughter after hearing him say this. Humor just brightens up the atmosphere even when there's tension in the air. It is something that we need to remember, not just for people who do presentations but for all of us in general. There's just more than enough reason to laugh.

Include staff development in your business model

I'm a bit biased when it comes to staff development and training. I'll admit - I'm a trainer. But somehow, your staff development has a direct impact to your organization's success. I was on a conference call assisting a staff on installing and configuring a new technology that they need to deliver to their customers. The first thing I usually recommend is to go for a formal training. What's "not" surprising is that the most common response is "we don't have a budget for training." The irony behind it is that one generates a revenue when delivering any type of service. Organizations expect to get something without giving something as an investment. What's worse is that I've seen organizations where their business model doesn't include staff development at all. Most consulting and services delivery companies where they bill their clients by man-hours want to make sure that the majority of the time they bill should be charged to the clients. Where does staff development and training come into the picture?

We spend money on our stock portfolios and financial investments, thinking that they will have a good return in the future, depending on the market movements. We invest in making a good impression and creating a brand image. What could be more important than the very people who help the organization generate the revenue and profits that all balance sheets reflect?

As Zane Zafrit, CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited, said, "It’s clear that people really do make a difference in the success of (an organization)"

You choose how you make a mark

I was at a supermarket counter last night when the counter attendant asked us if we were from South America. I replied by saying we were from Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines. The counter attendant suddenly replied, "Imelda Marcos! And her famous shoes!" While there was simply nothing wrong with what she said nor how she said it, I was surprised by what she said next. "Well, she definitely placed the Philippines on the map." That just confirmed what I always say when it comes to being popular. There are two ways to become famous: either you do good or just do the opposite. Either way, you'll leave a mark. Not only will that affect how we leave a legacy in this world, but it will definitely influence how people will look at who and what you are. It's your call

Include corporate social responsibility in your business model

It took me a few weeks to get back to blogging due to a lot of changes happening. But then, again, great ideas are always worth spreading.

A few weeks ago, I was privileged to assist Microsoft Singapore in providing software assistance to non-profit organizations. Normally, it only required reading thru some documentation and providing some analysis based on that but I've decided to go even further. Visiting the facility of the Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (MINDS) was definitely an unforgettable experience. The SIA-MINDS is actually a joint-project with - guess who - Singapore Airlines. The head phones that you see and use on the Singapore Airlines flights are being prepared for by the trainees at MINDS. What's really encouraging is the fact that not only do we see people who are intellectually disabled doing the work that nobody else would probably see but we see them doing a really good job. And what's good about Singapore Airlines is that they have included corporate responsibility and welfare in their business model, recognizing the importance of contributing to the communities it serves. Corporate social responsibility has become a buzz word in today's modern organizations. But every now and then, it gets challenged by stakeholders especially in times of recession (I still believe that recession is a state of mind). But whether we like it or not, the community is part of any organizations' stakeholders. If the community flourishes, so does our businesses. It's a win-win situation.

I think the best thing to do is to include corporate social responsibility in our business model. That way, we even have budgets allocated for any related projects. What's more, apart from the fact that we feel good when we extend our hand to someone else, it's nice to know that a warm smile is waiting for a hand somewhere where we could have extended ours.

So the next time you fly Singapore Airlines, ask for a head phone - those cute colorful ones. You'll know that somebody went thru a lot of effort making sure that they are in good shape for your entire flight.