Off the Shelf

The X and Y of Buy - How Men and Women Make Buying Decisions

I spend a lot of time studying and applying temperaments to my leadership and team building. I find it extremely important to know people, understand how best I can communicate with them and also how to put them in their areas of strength. Understanding temperaments helps me to that, plus a lot more.

There's also a lot to be said for as well for understanding gender differences. My personal Bible for this understanding, from a marketing perspective, is Michele Miller's The Soccer Mom Myth. It's an excellent tool for anyone trying to market and communicate to female customers and I highly recommend it.

The other day I was introduced to a new book from Thomas Nelson (yes, my employer) titled The X and Y of Buy by Elizabeth Pace. The book makes a very compelling case that in order to reach your audience (and at the same time get the sale) it is essential to know what separates the genders - what makes them different, unique and two distinct audiences for your presentation.

Like Soccer Mom, the X and Y of Buy provides a good amount of research and brain study that is gender focused. This research sets the stage for Pace's compelling arguments on presenting and selling to each gender. Her premise is that the genders are different and unique (they think differently, they react differently and innately have different communication needs), so you might as well treat them that way and present accordingly so each can clearly "hear" and understand your message.

The book is an good read and provides some very practical advice, even for non-selling situations. I wouild recommend it to anyone wanting to know gender differences and how they work in personal and business situations, especially when you are presenting or specifically selling.

Aligning Team Values and Your Vision

 A couple of weeks ago I posted an article about how team values shape your division/company/organization's culture. I offered a free assessment that I've used to determine your team's values (if you didn't get yours, just leave a comment and I'll send you the PDF).

I hadn't used the Values tool with my own team for five years and thought it would be an interesting excercise to see how the team's Value outlook had changed. The team has certainly changed. How, I wondered, had the values changed.

FIve years ago the team values were:

• Family Commitment
• Integrity
• Quality
• Excellence
• and a tie between Competence, Hard Work and Trust

Today, the team values are:

• Innovation
• Wisdom
• Hard Work
• Teamwork
• Family Commitment

It's quite a difference with only Hard Work and Family Commitment carrying over.

The next step in the exercise is for the team to clearly define these values. Any of these words can mean many things to each person. Consequently, our next step is to have the team define each word so my leadership team can know the boundaries of each word and how to maximize the culture accordingly. 

For example, Innovation to me means "executing creative ideas". To the team members it may mean simply "creative thinking". As a leader I need to know how they define the words and work towards alignment of the values to the overall goals of my area of responsibility. Alignment of culture to vision is key because in the end that's what gets the unit to the goals. Mis-alignment causes problems as people are feeling like they are working out of sync with their values. This feeling leads to poor execution and turnover.

What does your team value? Do those values align with your mission and vision?

Company Culture and Values

A culture, as I’ve written in the past, is like yogurt. It’s dynamic, changing and sometimes it can go sour. I’ve shared on this Blog a number of culture types determining essentially that culture is “how we get things done around here”. Said a different way, company or organizational culture is made up of the values and practices shared by the members of the group.

When I started at Thomas Nelson I asked my employees to do something I’d done with other groups. I use a worksheet that outlines more than 50 common values (If you’d like a PDF, just post a comment or send me a direct message and I’ll email it to you). I ask the employees to name their top five and also rank them. After compiling all the results (I do a bit of cross-tabbing so I can see how different groups respond, but never ask for a person’s name) I have a good picture of the common values of the group.

As a second step, I take the compiled top five and ask the team to define them. Semantics and nuance in this area are too important to leave to chance so I want the definition of the team’s top five values.

It’s also interesting to look at the bottom five as they give leaders a glimpse into the culture for a totally different perspective. For example, five years ago “Information Sharing” was in the Bible Group’s bottom five. It told me a lot about the culture I was inheriting and gave me a big hint of what I needed to do as a leader to promote team work.

Since it’s been five years and we’ve had some changes to the team, we’re taking it again. In a future post, I’ll compare and contrast the two results.

My takeaway from all this? Doing this exercise helps me answer this question: Are the values of the team aligned with my vision and the culture my leadership team and I are trying to build? Most of the time we can legislate practices, but values are deeply held beliefs and if their don’t align with the mission, it takes time, patience, teaching and good leadership to cause the alignment necessary to create something very special.

What are your work group’s top five values?

Expanded Bible a Twitter Success

Last week I posted an article about The Expanded Bible and included a link to download a file of the entire New Testament which officially releases in August. We also were giving away copies of the finished Bibles to the first 200 people who reviewed the PDF files on their blogs.

Many people picked up the post and “re-tweeted” it to their networks that included an article in The Washington Times, which sent more re-tweets and soon my inbox was a tsunami of comments, questions, and positive reviews.

We had so many questions I thought it would be good to post a video about the title. This should give you more details and a sense for how The Expanded Bible will help you in your Bible study and reading.

We're also extending the free copy offer.

Keep those comments and questions coming!

New Expanded Bible Coming Soon

No, Thomas Nelson hasn’t added new books to the Bible. We are, however, trying hard to meet our customers’ need to understand God’s voice as shown in His word.

We have a wonderful customer. They desperately want to know, understand and apply God’s word to their daily lives.  From church pastors and leaders to the person who encounters the Bible for the first time, this need is the same. The challenge for the vast majority of them is that the Bible represents an intimidating, time-consuming book full of ancient characters, places and languages.

 

To overcome this need Bible Publishers like Thomas Nelson try to develop products that give the customer help and hope in their quest to “hear” God’s voice. For example in the last two years Thomas Nelson has released three landmark products – The Chronological Study Bible, The Word of Promise Audio Bible and The Voice New Testament. Each one in it’s own way helps meet this universal customer need.

On August 11, 2009, Thomas Nelson will release a new product especially designed for our customer. Developed by a trusted team of Bible scholars The Expanded Bible New Testament, like the three titles I mentioned above, gives the reader help to reach their goal of hearing God’s message to them directly from the Scriptures.

Why is it different?

•              It meets the needs of the contemporary student of the Bible by combining devotional reading and in-depth study in a completely new way. Users can now study the Bible while they read with study aids and resources placed in-line with the text of the Bible.

•             It joins Bible text with traditional wordings, explanatory comments, additional wordings, literal meanings and expanded word definitions, all integrated within the text of the Scripture. 

•          It offers readers a unique Bible study experience by making them a part of the process and decisions made by scholars while developing a translation 

The end result is a Bible that is highly readable for devotions or study purposes that includes a richer in-text explanation of the Scripture. The experience will help customers grasp all that God is saying and give them a complete meaning of words and their alternative wordings. It’s like having a robust Bible reference library at your fingertips without having to flip a page or grab another book.

You can try this exceptional new product now. Simply go to this site and download a free PDF file and enjoy the experience first-hand.

Post your thoughts on your personal blog, and share the comments in the review sections of a few online retailers and send me the link so that I can hear your thoughts about The Expanded Bible New Testament. The Thomas Nelson team will send the first 200 responders/commenters a free paperback copy of the Bible (a $19.99 value) as soon as they hit our warehouse as a thank you for your input.

Honest Leadership

Good leaders are never afraid of communicating truth to their people. Every time we stop shy of the truth we cheat ourselves and, worst of all, we rob our people of opportunity and personal growth.

We all need to be upfront and honest with our people about the situation, the marketplace, the competition, resources and performance. It’s the best way to maximize the organization and them.

Here are some random thoughts on why we must be honest:

·         It helps them grow. The best way to help an employee grow is to tell them the truth. Holding back in a attempt to be “kind” won’t help them isolate areas for improvement, recognize blind spots or grow. And, as an aside, please don’t wait for some annual review time to help them. Communicate honestly and communicate as frequently as possible.

·         It helps them solve problems. Most of the time the answers you need to grow your business, get out of the hole or do something different are right there in your people’s heads. By telling them the truth about the situation you’ll tap into their creativity and problem solving abilities. Telling them the truth will unleash tremendous solutions.

·         It gets them aligned. Whether the news is good or bad having your people aligned with your vision and the reality creates tremendous team strength and synergy.

·         It gets the right team in place. As hard as it is, and I’ve learned this lesson, honest communication about performance and other employee issues helps leaders to get the right team. People who won’t listen, will leave and people with a learning spirit will stay and be valuable team members.

Kouzes and Posner’s landmark book, The Leadership Challenge, relates, “in every survey we conducted, honesty was selected more often than any other leadership characteristic.”

The Importance of a Balanced Team

Jeff Seton’s  recent Blog on the personality secrets of the American Idol judges was, once again, a good reminder of the importance of a balanced team. He points out that the addition of Kara DioGuardi rounded out the team to include someone who can focus on “operational” or technical aspects of the singer and the competition. He includes some Myers-Briggs information to assist the reader in seeing the new and, more balanced, approach.

 

Teams need balance. Your team and mine need people who represent different ideas, experience, temperaments and strengths.

Why?

Some reasons:

Balance brings diversity. Having people with differing strengths, backgrounds and ideas brings a natural diversity.

Diversity brings multiple opinions that enrich discussion if the leader is open and patient.

Multiple opinions and discussion lead to quality decisions. Too often leaders want quick decisions or don’t have the patience to allow good discussions that lead to quality decisions. Quality decisions come out of patience and a desire to hear all sides of the issue. Too often the size of the agenda or the meeting’s timeframe dictates the outcome rather than the strength of balanced discussion and quality decisions.

As you assemble your team or prepare meetings remember the importance of balance. Seek to hear from everyone’s perspective and drive hard for quality decisions over rapidly ticking off the agenda items.

Putting People in the Right Spots

One part of my job that gives me tremendous personal satisfaction is making sure people are working in the right spot. Not only is this personally satisfying, I feel strongly that doing this is ultimately the best for the organization.

Over the years I’ve tried several things to help me do this and I’ve settled on two tools that are invaluable to me as I try to maximize my employee’s efforts and get them in the right spot. Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with simply asking the employee some questions and observing where they seem to gather energy and what tasks or projects seem to drain them. But, from my experience these two tools are the best way to help them settle into the right spot and their best zone:

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I’ve used several temperament tools, but I find this one to be most effective in helping me with my people. Basically the instrument is segmented into four preference categories and it gives you an opportunity to completely understand an individual from those preferences. By doing this you’ll not only better understand the individual, you’ll be able to help them in the context of the team structure.

StrengthFinders. Once I read Marcus Buckingham’s book, Now, Discover Your Strengths, I realized I had a different tool to help me. With StrengthFinders you can easily determine people’s five highest ranked strengths and again, not only understand them better, but also put them into situations that fuel their strengths and their personal satisfation. Consequently, they are more productive, happier and feel a sense of accomplishment.

It’s vital to put people in their most effective working zones and if you’re not using these two tools, I highly recommend that you give them a try and see the positive results for your employees, your team, your organization and yourself.

An Important Aspect of WOW

I really enjoy American Idol. There's all that talent, there's the advice from the judges, there's competition and there's a winner who is picked by the public. No doubt it's my favorite show on TV. What always hits me between the eyes is the importance of song choice. These singers, once we get to this place in the season, have the talent and chops to have a singing career. However, many of them, especially this week, are tripped up by song choice. And, many times when the judges tell them that, the singers respond with, "Well, I really like this song". What they may not understand is that WOW is not about YOU. It's about the customer.

Contrast this to a conference call I had this week with two authors. They have the talent, skill and experience to create good products, but they also can create some WOW products because these two people weren't thinking about themselves, they spent the whole conversation talking about how the products would be not only for the customer but also transform the customer. They weren't focused on what they personally liked or disliked they were totally focused on the customer and what they needed in order to live a transformed life.

The lesson from this comparison is this - 9 people went home last night from American Idol and the majority of them went home not because they didn't have the talent. No, they went home because they chose to sing a song they liked and frankly they didn't deliver what the customer (listener) wanted. Conversely, I see tremendous opportunity from the product conference call because the authors involved zeroed in on the customer, the customer's needs and not themselves.

Managing the Spiral of Change

In most organizations change is inevitable. The cycle is something like this – a new idea is created. This idea can come from many sources, either external or internal, but mostly change starts with an idea, that “aha!” moment.

The idea is disused and debated. It’s morphed and fine-tuned.

Then, the team or individual finds peace with it and is ready to launch it to the next group or function within the organization. He or she presents the idea with passion, perfected PowerPoint or Keynote slides, they may even wear a killer outfit just to add to the excitement. But, when they are finished they hear the dull roar of silence. They proudly present the idea and FLOP it hits the floor with a thud. What happened?

Before we go there, lets continue the story. Our leader (idea generator) talks and cajoles and sells their idea to this next level. They finally get it! So, the next step is to take the idea to the next level in the organization and guess what happens? It once again hits the floor with a thud with a new group of people. What happened?

It’s called the spiral of change. One person or one level of the organization gets an idea and each time they present the idea to the next level it takes them a lot of work to get the same excitement they feel about it. What happens is they don’t understand the spiral.

When you or your team has an idea and then need to take it to another group or team, in reality your thinking is way ahead of them. Your personal spiral is several rungs ahead of where they are – they haven’t even heard of the idea and you expect them to immediately be at the same place you are. Believe me, this won’t happen very often.

I see it all the time in our product meetings. The person who has the passion for the product has to work hard to get others to accept it, and then when they take it to another level (our Sales team for example) they have to work hard again. Why? Each new team is at the bottom of the spiral. They must be brought (or pulled) up to the same level on the spiral if you expect to successfully implement the idea or change.

The best way I’ve found to do this is by “making meaning” for the next group. When I take time to make meaning and give them the context, the purpose, the felt need and the strategy they seem to come up the spiral must quickly and more ready to embrace the change or new idea.

Making meaning is an integral part of your team building arsenal if you expect people to come alongside you and follow you (especially during change). Making meaning for the team brings peace to the team as well as a level of significant trust. People are quicker to accept the change if they fully understand the why behind the change and their role in the new tomorrow. With meaning, the spiral of change flattens.