Mike Lehr's Blog

Here is a valuable problem-solving question:

How can a business maximize its profit every single minute of the day and still go out of business?

The answer is:

It can because it won’t be making any investments; those require expenditures and would prevent the maximization of profits every single minute.

The question has value as a problem-solving training exercise because it forces our attention on the relationship between profits and time:

If the maximization of profits every single minute causes a business to go out of business, what is the appropriate time frame to consider?

As we know, the financial markets like to scrutinize profits quarterly. However, is this really the best time frame? I once contracted for a private company that was positioning itself to be sold. The owner cut staff to the bone in order to beef up the financials and market value. He took a gamble that revenues could hold with the cutbacks at least for the near-term. If a sale did not materialize in the near term, he might have seen service quality suffer and eventually revenues. What did this bode for the acquirer? The implication here is that what we consider a “profitable company” is arguable depending upon the criteria we want to use. In other words, a profitable company could be as subjective as a work of art. Moreover, a costly investment in the near-term might be beneficial in the long term depending upon how we define the long term. Thus, the final question that all of this begs is this:

Over what time period should a business strive to maximize profits?

The mere fact we can debate the question suggests its arbitrariness and why a single business purchase could work for one person and not for the other.

Many things are obvious to us consciously but our actions often betray us. Initiating change among employees is one of those things. We might consciously know that people are light switches but we often expect change as though they were. How often do we say to our bosses, “Yes, I told them about the new way,” in response to pressure as to why employees didn’t adopt a change? Such a response indicates we are expecting people to be light switches.

Switch (FIG #1)

Tomato Plants (FIG #2)

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Look at Figures 1 and 2. Which is more analogous to employees, the light switch or the tomato plants? If we select the plants, can we fully expect them to grow with only one watering or feeding? If we view them as light switches, then yes, we could. Flipping them to “on” has them adopt the changes we want and flip them to “off” has them stop the old habits.

As you can see, my wife is growing these tomato plants by having them grow within a circular, vertical wire frame. This allows them to grow taller so more vines can bear tomatoes. Yes, sometimes the vines extend out of the frame, so she works them back in to encourage them upward. She just didn’t plop down the frame and then expect them to follow it.

The same holds true for people. They require follow up and regularly observation. It usually takes at least five enforcements of the change over a couple months before the change becomes the new habit. Even then, depending upon the change, a periodic refreshing of it is needed. That is why as managers our follow up is more important than what we’ve said.

As is commonly known, viewing the same thing from different perspectives often alters that thing. One time, someone cited 1+1=2 as a “fact” that remained unchanged regardless of perspective. However, it really demonstrates the malleability of facts.

For instance, consider these four true expressions of 1+1:

1. 1+1=2
2. 1+1=10
3. 1+1=11
4. 1+1=1

The first is the normal arithmetic expression we learned in school; however, what we often overlook is that it uses just one type of numeric language called Base 10. The second example expresses the same thing but uses a numeric language called Binary. It’s even more widely used than our recognizable form because it’s the language of computers.

The third expression assumes that “1” is a shape. Imagine adding one spade to another to get two of them. We can express it symbolically as ♣ + ♣ = ♣♣. This is frequently the first “language” used to teach children arithmetic.

The fourth expression is a bit more difficult to see but is frequently used too. Consider the statement that one man plus one woman equals one couple. Another example would be a single drink which we make by adding one part A to one part B. Consider as well that one period of sunlight and one period of darkness equals one day. In these examples each “1” in the equation represents a unique item. In other words, they each represent one of something different rather one of the same thing as in the other three perspectives.

Thus, this exercise helps to train our minds to search for different perspectives and to demonstrate the importance of not just looking at the facts . . . but how they are interpreted.

In the August 2, 2010 issue of the New Yorker, Atul Gawande writes in “Letting Go” about the importance of hospice giving “patients someone experienced and knowledgeable to talk to about their daily needs,” suggesting it helps to reduce traditional medical costs. This is a form of the “talking cure” first coined by Josef Breur and further developed by Sigmund Freud. The essential concept is that talking through our troubles helps to alleviate our anxiety.

In the work place, we often incorrectly identify this talking as a “bitch session.” An office manager in a law firm once complained to me about the time it was taking her to “talk through” various personality conflicts among the secretarial staff. I finally asked her, “What makes you think this isn’t part of your job?”

When people perform at their peaks, some anxiety will naturally exist because they are working on the edge of their comfort zones. The song Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins from the movie Top Gun expresses quite well the intensity of operating on this edge. Analogously, what would happen to a runner if she wore a wet suit and could not release her sweat? The same thing occurs on an emotional level if people cannot release their “emotional sweat.” Thus, we compound the problem when we discourage or criticize release.

Anyone who has worked in a law office knows that legal secretaries can work under some intense pressures. These pressures can easily create intense interpersonal encounters. Talking through them will help to ensure they don’t explode and assume more harmful forms. Managers should expect to have to “talk through” events with their people and not necessarily interpret them as bitch sessions.

On a recent business trip, I met a community bank president from Williston, North Dakota. He had just heard a presentation I gave regarding influencing and wanted to share his thoughts.

He has a daily regimen of walking through his bank and saying good morning to each employee. He wanted to emphasize to me the impact he felt this has had on his people. For him it has been quite an eye-opening experience and has surpassed his expectations. He went on to say that it’s so easy to forget how valuable these things are when you’re dealing with the daily demands of the job.

What I have found is that executives often do not realize the impact they can have with simple gestures of appreciation with their people. With a previous employer, whenever I organized training, I could always guarantee a successful segment if I got an executive to do a half-hour question and answer. These portions of the training, regardless of the executive’s speaking skills, produced top evaluative marks from the participants.

When you consider such simple gestures don’t cost a cent, the return on investment is astronomical. The most powerful tools we have are the ones God and Mother Nature gave us.

In the last month, my wife and I had the opportunity on separate occasions to talk to a director of a very successful organic farm and the owner of a local Thai restaurant about talent. In both cases, they emphasized people who had a passion for their work.

In the director’s case, he felt talent followed passion. He could hire an untrained, passionate employee and eventually see that employee’s talent for the work surface. When contrasting this employee with a more talented, dispassionate employee, he found that the former a much better longer-term employee.

In the restaurant owner’s case, he claimed there were two types of chefs: those who love the food that they cook and those who cook because it’s a job. There was no comparison in his mind. To him, attention to detail is a critical cooking attribute. By far, the passionate chef paid more attention to detail.

While this might not be new, what is lesser known is the impact passion has on creativity. About five years ago, I had the honor to co-facilitate with J. Michael Fox of the International Center for Studies in Creativity a discussion on creativity. His center found that the single most important factor that shot creativity off the charts was motivation. When people are highly motivated, the possibility for creative thought and action was virtually limitless.

Motivation exceeded all other factors such as intelligence, education, experience, aptitude, skill set, etc, and liking what you do is an important contributor to motivation. That is why the Center found that “fun” used in purposeful ways contributed greatly to the creative process. In a day, when companies are working extremely hard to innovate and achieve competitive edges, maybe the simplest and best thing to do is to hire passionate employees.

Glass Half Full? Half Empty?

One of my favorite metaphors to use as a “challenging assumptions exercise” is the “Is your glass half full or half empty” one. The basic assumption is that the choice is one of attitude: if your attitude is positive you will choose “half full,” if negative “half empty.” One of the reasons why I like it is that it can create quite a stir in folks when they see the answer is not quite so clear cut. This is important because viewing problems from an alternate perspective can trigger negative emotional responses that retard problem solving.

For instance, we can disrupt this popular metaphor by asking: Who is more likely to go out and get more water? The answer is the one who views his glass half empty. As we saw with bonus plans, the fear of loss is much more powerful than the joy of gain. Therefore, those who feel that they’ve already lost half their water supply are more likely to secure more water than those who feel they still have half remaining.

I experienced a real life example of this when I was taking a new national sales manager around to the troops. We visited the office of a sales representative who was out. The manager looked around and pointed to a picture of the representative’s four children and wife and said, “I love to see that. It means he’ll be real hungry to sell and support his family.”

This is also why crises are the most effective ways to encourage change. Consequently, if you were a water salesperson, you would be more likely to make a sale if you could get the customer to see his glass as half empty rather than half full.

Frequently, I’m asked about the difference between instinct and intuition. The question is difficult because everyday conversation has a gender bias. Men tend to prefer the word “instinct” over “intuition” to describe their emotional processes while women tend to prefer the reverse. So, listening skills are important.

Analogously, instinct is to intuition what an accented note is to a song. Just as an accent adds a particular emphasis to a specific note in the song, instinct adds a particular emphasis to an emotion in the intuitive process. Very simply, there are three types of instincts: survival, paternal and maternal. Survival protects our well being through fight or flight. It accentuates emotions such as guardedness or avoidance. Paternal extends our dominance and control, accentuating emotions such as aggressiveness and competitiveness. Maternal protects and nurtures others, accentuating emotions such as protectiveness and sacrifice.

While instincts can serve us well in urgent, severe situations, they can lead us astray and allow us to be easily manipulated in modern life’s intricacies. For instance, instinctively lashing out at someone for a threatening act could have consequences in the workplace. Intuition would help us balance the emotions accentuated by that threat with the ones fearing the consequences to arrive at a pragmatic alternative fitting our context.

Returning to our musical analogy, this means that rather than reacting to the one accented note we are waiting to hear the whole song before we think and act. It also means that while there isn’t much to creating a single note, creating a song is more involved. Therefore, just as it takes practice to develop cognitive skills it also takes practice to develop intuitive ones. Instincts are innate and thus our default. As such they require very little, if any, development.

I recently read in the Schumpeter column, “In Search of Serendipity,” of the July 24, 2010 edition of The Economist about the book, The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things In Motion, by John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison. Automatically, the vision of bell bottoms returning to vogue arose. The concept is very similar to Carl Jung’s 1920’s introduction of synchronicity.

As stated in Schumpeter, the basic premise of the book is that “success in business increasingly depends on chance encounters.” It’s these chance encounters that seem spontaneous in the present but more purposeful with future’s hindsight. This is synchronicity repackaged.

About ten years ago, a good colleague was asking about the connections I’ve made to see if I could support this conclusion about his connections: the most profitable ones tended to come outside of his traditional, planned sales efforts. They originated from “out of the blue” encounters at non-business events when he didn’t expect them. I could relate.

It’s a basic premise of my blog that technological advancements are allowing us to see better and better the powerful impact our emotional-related processes such as intuition have in our everyday lives. As Schumpeter supports, advances in the internet – with the social media that it delivers – increases our ability to connect. This is giving us a larger sample population in which to observe that chance encounters really might not be that coincidental. It’s easy to discard one or two coincidences, but a dozen? But, make no mistake that is a concept that has been around for thousands of years in many American Indian and Eastern philosophies.

As we already know, one of the best ways to develop our problem-solving skills is to view things from a different perspective. Challenging assumptions is a way to do this, but this assumes we know the assumptions we’re using. Since they frequently go undetected, this can be problematical.

Nevertheless, we can train our minds to spot them. The process is similar to the one used by chess players in preparation for matches. They run through practice scenarios even though they won’t see them in the match. They are training their minds to see something similar. Students taking practice exams for standardized tests are doing the same thing; they won’t run across those questions but the practice establishes the right mind set for taking the test. We can improve our mindset for identifying assumptions by practicing with everyday situations.

For instance, a sales person asking whether you want to by the blue car or the red one is assuming that you wish to buy the car in the first place. A manager who says that you can make a lot of money if you do something is assuming that money is very important to you. When a neighbor told us he was going to get ice for the party, we assumed he would get enough for five ice chests; he only bought one bag. In business we often strive for efficiencies, but the assumption is that quality won’t suffer. The question, “Are we organized yet?” is assuming that organizing is necessary; the task might not require it.

Once a day, try to identify the assumptions people use in their decisions. No matter how obvious they might be, you will be honing your problem-solving skills.