In addition to hosting baseball, Yankee Stadium is also the home field for the New York City Football Club (soccer) even though the seasons overlap. As a result, the grounds crew at the stadium needs to convert the playing field from baseball to soccer and back as frequently as for one match.
On the day we were there, the crew was out laying new turf to cover the infield dirt and anchoring the soccer goal stands in the outfield. Later the pitcher’s mound will be leveled and the field restriped – all for one soccer meet before the Yankees return to baseball. This seems like the kind of transition that many would label as either impossible or not worth it, but obviously, the Yankees’ ownership feels that it is economically viable to do on a regular basis.
Are you limiting yourself or your organization too much by seeing yourself as only a single-service provider? If the stadium can make regular accommodations from one sport to another, perhaps you can expand your reach by exhibiting the same flexibility toward being a two-option organization. The grass could be greener if you adapt to where you place it.
I
t used to be that there was a photo developer on every corner. Drug stores, department stores, drive up kiosks, separate one-hour photo stores – everyone had a substantial amount of space and equipment dedicated to processing pictures.
And then came the camera phone and sharing took place digitally instead of through print. Approximately 52 million photos are uploaded onto Instagram each day, and none of them need a developer for processing.
Some stores still offer photo developing, but I wonder how long they will continue to utilize prime retail space for such functions. Target, for example, has a large photo center in the front of one of its stores – it was virtually empty while I was waiting to meet someone. It seems that they could be more profitable by offering other goods or services instead of having a large, unused area showing signs of entropy. While I am sure these centers were quite profitable in their day, I believe their time has come to an end for most retailers.
Think of whether you have services in your organization that are past their prime and should be reimagined – in other words, how to capitalize on the growth in picture taking while acknowledging the decline in photo developing.
Are you dedicating space and assets toward something that once provided you with benefits but no longer does? Maybe it’s time to develop a new plan about how you picture your future.
In the midst of all the hustle and bustle at LaGuardia airport, travelers now have the option of a respite. Soundproof cubicles with a writing shelf are available to rent in 15-minute increments (for $30/hr). It reminded me of old-fashioned phone booths, only with an Internet connection and place to sit down.
These booths provide a place to conduct calls, participate by video or just get work done without distraction. They bill it as “a workspace to think, create, connect and recharge.” I could use one of them in my home!
In a world of open office spaces and community gathering points, there is still something to be said for quiet. The Jabbrrbox vendor found a way to conveniently make it available at LaGuardia through rental of personal booths. Perhaps you should do a noise audit at your organization and create your own quiet boxes if necessary. Providing a silent option can golden to some employees.
In a move that I will never understand, the Iowa state legislature approved the sale of fireworks but left it up to individual municipalities to decide whether or not it was legal to shoot the devices. In the city where I live, it is illegal to light off fireworks, but very legal to sell them. Thus, in several parking lots throughout town, we have big tents of vendors selling the pyrotechnics that are forbidden to be (legally) used.
Of course, the vendors have no incentive to clarify the distinction to customers, and buyers assume that they are legal because they are being sold everywhere. The police have been trying to spread the word that a $250 fine awaits those who shoot them within the city, but by then the damage will have been done.
Think about whether your organization has a policy with an incongruity similar to the fireworks debacle. Does your business office preach stewardship yet deny employees opportunities to get a warehouse membership or purchase from a cheaper vendor? Does it claim to put customers first yet cut the support it gives to the call center? Or does your organization officially claim that flextime is available but shuns those who take advantage of it?
Whether through a mismatched set of laws, inconsistent policies or conflicting norms, no one benefits when there are mixed messages about whether something is appropriate or not. It’s fine to lay down the law but only if you are prepared to make everyone follow it.
Air travel, something that used to be a luxury for the affluent, has become a chaotic experience for the multitudes. I was just in O’Hare and LaGuardia where oversold flights, insufficient airport seating and understaffed ticket counters contributed to a harried boarding process for all.
But what really made it mayhem was the illogical policy airlines have regarding checked baggage. It makes no sense to me that airlines charge people to check their bags – thus encouraging carry-ons – but have inadequate space to accommodate them. On several legs of my trip, the final boarding group was mandated to check their roller-boards at the gate, thus doing for free what would have cost $25 if the passenger had done it in a timely fashion, but now doing it at the worst possible time and place from an efficiency perspective. It seems crazy that airlines push a practice that delays the process and requires much more manual work by the airline without generating revenue. The last-minute free checking further discourages people from checking their bags for their next trip when they are guaranteed to pay to do so; instead, many people will take their chances that they’ll get a free pass at the gate.
Wouldn’t airlines rather have people check their bags? It would expedite the boarding and deplaning processes and avoid all the last-minute gate checks. It seems to me that they are incentivizing the wrong thing: checked bags should be free and carry-ons that don’t fit under the seat should incur a charge.
The next time you implement a policy, think through what would happen if it worked. What if your policy to encourage one set of behavior was wildly successful: what implications would that have? What are the downsides to a shift in practice and how can you mitigate them? All policies have inherent baggage inherent in their implementation. Your job is to check the negatives and carry on with the positives instead of doing the reverse by default.
In my work with organizations, I often encounter people with lofty goals who want to develop the next big thing for their group. There is a focus on “add, add, add” and creating something new. I liken it to someone making a necklace by focusing on the baubles rather than the string.
I think a more pragmatic and productive approach is to begin by assessing the pearls that already exist in an organization. By pearls, I mean the strengths, existing programs, signature services, events or the brand assets that are in place and that connect to the goal. Next, consider how these can be assembled into a more powerful and cohesive whole to increase the impact without further taxing the resources to produce them. By identifying the “loose pearls” you already have that could be strung together into a “necklace”, it allows for more rapid evidence of progress and more clearly identifies the gaps that, if filled, could make the impact more robust.
The temptation is to “think big” so focusing on existing pearls often feels insignificant. However, tying a ribbon around current components or “stringing the pearls” doesn’t have to be the end point, just the starting one.
Remember that the classic pearl choker makes an impact without being flashy. No one ever said: “Oh, the pearls on that necklace are too small.”
When people leave an organization those left behind bear the burden of the departure, but except in rare instances, the organization carries on despite the vacancies. I liken this to a Jenga tower.
Even with pieces (people) missing, the essence of the structure remains. The tower is resilient and can handle a few holes, but when this occurs all actions require significantly more time and effort to be executed. The more pieces missing, the higher the stress level.
Some pieces can be removed without impact, but others are key pieces that create great instability for what remains. Neither Jenga or an organization has unlimited capacity to absorb departures, and at a given point, the tower will fall. It’s much easier in the game than in reality to pick up the pieces and rebuild, but some organizational leaders act as if there is no distinction.
If you have staff vacancies, Jenga can be a useful analogy to help the continuing staff to put the departures into perspective. With a piece or two missing, the situation isn’t as dire as it may first seem. But Jenga can also help you as a leader to remember that the overall situation becomes more precarious with each piece that is removed.
One of the key functions of a successful person is their ability to manage the day-to-day while simultaneously thinking about tomorrow. It’s harder than it seems. There are so many demands on time at the moment that we often become engrossed in it and forget about what comes next.
For example:
>Entrepreneurs need to be thinking about who their next client is even when they are busy working for their current customer.
>Project managers need to plan ahead as to what supplies they will need before they go to reach for them.
>Supervisors must be developing strategy and acquiring resources long before their staff will need to implement the plans.
Consider the techniques that you can use to help yourself think longer term in the midst of short-term busyness. Maybe it’s a desk calendar that displays the following month or a multi-month calendar on your wall. Perhaps it is a Gantt chart or software display of future deadlines. It could be a journal that allows for dreaming, or a weekly planning meeting that shifts the focus to the coming weeks instead of today.
No matter your method, you need to follow the mantra of the West Wing’s President Jed Bartlet and ask yourself “what’s next?” – not just about what is in the next moment, but for the long-term moments after that. If you’re the leader (of yourself or your organization), your job description is the only one that includes thinking about tomorrow.
As tempting as public water fountains are, many cities have long restricted people from playing in therm. After decades of fighting against the natural tendency to play in the water, cities are now encouraging it by building splash pads in parks and recreation areas. Splash pads allow children (of all ages) to gravitate toward the jets of water and play in the shooting fountains.
In a similar vein, athletic teams once attempted to restrict fans from sharing video clips or posting images to social media accounts, but now the NBA is cultivating this type of engagement. Basketball’s chief marketing officer sees social media as an opportunity and she has worked to engage people on all social channels. In addition to happy fans, the NBA has seen a rise in viewership, sponsorship and has 60+ million followers on Facebook/Twitter.
For decades, live concert performances prohibited cameras or any type of recordings, but with the proliferation of cameras on phones, some entertainers have decided to embrace the access instead of trying to restrict it. Many concerts now feature hashtags and posed photographic moments as bands encourage sharing.
Think of the behaviors that are happening in your organization that are causing you to fight a losing battle – something that is difficult to enforce and costs you good will in the process. Maybe it is prohibiting dogs on trails in your city, banning betting on sports or restricting outside food from your venue. What would be the effect if you made a splash and embraced the behavior instead?
Source for NBA information: Most Creative People: Pam El, for scoring with NBA fans, Fast Company, Summer 2018, p. 26.
The movie Adrift recounts the tale of Tami Oldham and Richard Sharp’s journey sailing across the Pacific from Tahiti en route to San Diego. When the pair encounters Hurricane Raymond and the boat suffers serious damage, they find themselves in the middle of the ocean without communication or full sails.
At this point, Tami makes the decision to aim for Hawaii instead of San Diego. The islands are an additional 600 miles away, but the wind and currents are pulling in this direction and she believes it will aid in her travels. She alters the boat’s course and was rescued after 41 days with Hawaii in sight.
In your organization, I wonder how many decisions are made without taking the winds or current into account. People continue to forge on, doing what is in the plan or what seems like the shortest path without ever considering that a change in direction may be the best option in the end. The best route isn’t always the most obvious one.
Don’t wait for a hurricane to reassess your path.
At airports and public spaces around the country, there are vestiges of phone booths from days gone by. Most establishments have removed them and replaced them with something else entirely, but the Denver airport repurposed them into private workstations. While passengers may not require the physical phone itself, they still appreciate the sound buffering that the padded sides afford as well as the desk space in order to accomplish their work.
Think about spaces you have in your organization. Have they remained stagnant or outlived their usefulness? Perhaps you could refresh them to add a different level of functionality: the counter that holds the fax machine could become a clear workstation, an alcove could gain a small table instead of just seats to make it easier to work on a laptop, tellers could sit at a desk instead of behind a counter or hotels could replace spaces that hold physical phones and alarm clocks with wireless printers for their guests.
Just because something claimed a space at one time does not give it the right to keep it forever.
People often wait until the last minute to complete a task, using the rationale that they were too busy to get the job done sooner. I think this is faulty logic.
Waiting until the last minute often requires more time – in part, because it makes it difficult for others to help you.
For example:
>If the content isn’t finalized, no one can help you develop the presentation or make copies.
>If the menu isn’t planned, someone else can’t get the groceries for you.
>If the vacation flight isn’t booked, others can’t reserve the car or line up the dog sitter.
>If your idea is still being changed up until the presentation, you are unable to brainstorm with others or get input.
>If you wait to write your grant right before it is due, you’re on your own to proof it, too.
>If you shop for a gift on the way to the party, you also need to buy a gift bag and tissue instead of having someone else wrap it at home.
And on it could go.
Investing in planning that allows you to delegate, share and receive feedback ultimately will pay you back with not only an improved outcome but one that requires less of you at the last minute. Time spent on the front end is exponentially more valuable than cramming on the back end.
My sister lives in close proximity to a major airport, a fact I often forget until I see a plane fly overhead at such a low altitude that I can read the tail number. When I was inside her house I did not hear the planes at all until I was lying in bed in the silence of the evening, and even then, it sounded more like thunder in the background instead of a jet engine roaring overhead.
Her home is in the Noise Abatement Zone – an area that receives compensation to provide extra insulation and windows so that those who live there can do so without intolerable audio pollution. It certainly has cost the airlines and airport thousands (millions?) of dollars to provide this mitigation but in the end, it has made it workable for everyone.
The aviation leaders knew of the negative consequences of airport noise on adjacent residential homes and schools and took steps to address it, even though the cost was great. Don’t fly over your problems. Instead, think of how your organization can identify rumbles in your environment and proactively abate them.
Another implication of excessive brand extensions (as I wrote about yesterday) is that it makes couponing all but impossible. Twice recently I have been in line at the grocery store with a current coupon that I wanted to use on a product and was declined. “Yes, they are Johnsonville original brats”, the clerk sniped, “but not the Johnsonville flame grilled original brats.” Too bad for me.
The faulty logic comes in for the store when I decided not to purchase the product without the coupon. Due to health laws, they are unable to return the package back to the sales floor and thus literally tossed out $7 worth of meat right in front of me rather than give me one dollar off.
It reminded me of a saying that my colleague Michael Miller often repeated to us: “What does being right get you?” Yes, the coupon technically was not applicable to the product I had chosen, but what did being right do for them? They irritated me, they aggravated the customers in line behind me, and they ruined a much greater value than if they had honored the coupon even though it was incorrect.
Think about Michael’s question when you are training your staff, creating policy or deciding what course of action you should follow. What does being right get you? Most times, you just walk away with righteousness at a ridiculously high cost.
When it was suggested that we visit tar pits when we were in Los Angeles, I thought that they were joking. It turned out to be a fascinating lesson in understanding the Ice Age and how it impacted our ecosystem today.
The La Brea Tar Pits are an archeological wonder in central Los Angeles. Both in controlled excavating and even in spots in the parking lot, pools of oily tar are visible, just as they have been for centuries. Bones of thousands of plants and animals have been preserved in this tar and reclaimed for public display.
The Tar Pits Museum demonstrates how during the Ice Age the Wooly Mammoths would wade into the pits attempting to eat plants but become trapped in the sticky tar. Subsequently, wolves and other predators would see a vulnerable mammoth and move in close to eat it, thus becoming trapped as well. This continued throughout the food chain with more and more animals becoming victims of the tar pit pool.
Without the context at the museum it is hard to imagine how giant mammoths could disappear but seeing their exhibits makes the behavior logical if not inevitable. One thing led to another and to another and soon the whole ecosystem was mired in a gooey mess. Tens of thousands of years later archeologists are still excavating bones that recreate the disastrous path.
Think of what is the equivalent of a tar pit in your organization. Where do your employees continually get tripped up on policies or procedures that cause them to be stuck? What behaviors create complications that have a ripple effect throughout the organization? What conditions paralyze your staff and leave them vulnerable to outside forces? It may not be a literal tar pit, but there may be something toxic in your environment that mires the best of intentions. It’s time to do some organizational excavating!
As part of our “California Adventure”, we rented a house so the family could stay together instead of in multiple hotel rooms. The agreement was for the home to come fully equipped with all we would need for our stay.
The gray area came about with consumables. Who was responsible for providing trash bags, dishwasher soap, laundry detergent, napkins, shampoo, paper towels, tissues or even propane for the grill? We found ourselves making daily trips to the local grocery store because we needed something that was always on hand in our own home environment.
Renting a house highlighted the number of disposables or consumables that a family uses in a given week, but it also made me more aware of the items that are staples for routine functioning. Think about what is on your “list of essentials” for your home or office. Do you have a checklist or way to monitor inventory so that you are not making multiple trips to the store? Can you automate the ordering of certain items to make it even easier? Can you get more clarity on things you feel are optional that another in your home or organization would classify as essential?
A lot of time is wasted when the basic resources are unavailable. Don’t be running out to get what you ran out of.
our temporary home!
My sister was one of the 17,823 students to graduate from the University of Southern California this year and I was one of her several family members present for the festivities. We attended the School of Education doctoral ceremony – only for those receiving an Ed.D. – and yet there were still over 300 candidates to be hooded. Even without speeches, the program lasted over two hours.
Commencements are tricky business for event planners because people only truly care about 30 seconds of the program, but for those fleeting moments to be meaningful they must be embedded in pomp and circumstance and combined with hundreds of others having their fame.
At USC, they held 33 separate ceremonies in addition to the main graduation and baccalaureate. Over 60,000 guests passed through campus to see their friend or family member celebrate their accomplishment. And while program-specific recognitions make the experience more personal, the multitude of events require extra steps to pull off. For example, thousands of chairs were set up on every quad, and all were individually clipped together with zip ties to avoid having to do a realignment. The ceremony was live streamed to accommodate overflow crowds. Campus maps were printed on giant vinyl banners and hung in strategic locations. An Office of University Events was created to orchestrate the logistics.
The Power of Moments and other research has shown that the ending makes a disproportionately high impact on people’s feelings about the overall experience. If you are involved in commencements, retirement parties, hospital discharges or any event planning, dedicate the extra attention to the details of the farewell.
What does cutting the grass and painting have in common? Besides being household chores, both are comprised of two segments: the middle and the edges.
I don’t mind cutting the grass – if it means those long, continuous stretches in the center of the lawn – but I hate all the edging and trimming along the sides. I don’t mind painting the walls –as long as it is the center of the wall itself – but I lose patience when trying to paint around windows and doors. Yet, the quality of the work overall is determined precisely by how well those details are done.
When judging the amount of time to do painting or mowing, we often give estimates to do the heart of the project and grossly underestimate the time it will take to do the edging well. This manifest itself in our organizations when we give credence to those who paint the main part of the walls and overlook those who perform the tedious trim work, or we volunteer to take on the tasks that can be performed with the riding mower but leave the weed-whacking to others.
When you are making assignments, projecting timelines or appropriating recognition, keep your lawn in mind. If you only address what occurs in the center section, your competitors will mow you over with their quality.
I recently spent some time at garage sales (or tag sales as my East Coast friends like to call them). Dozens and dozens of homes had hundreds of items for sale and people were buying like crazy.
I spent a couple of bucks on some odds and ends but also bought a teak desk for $30. I was not looking for a desk, but the owner was moving and anxious to sell so I couldn’t pass up his let’s-get-rid-of-this price. (Later, the wood expert guessed it was worth several hundred dollars and she suggested that I got the bargain of the day!)
I was struck by the number of transactions that occurred and continue to be amazed at the robust market for “used.” Garage sales, Goodwill, resale shops, Craigslist, eBay, the vending machine in the mall that buys used phones, flea markets and consignment stores all contribute to the reuse of unwanted merchandise. Stores such as Books A Million now buy back used audio or paper books, and Amazon has an extensive Seller Marketplace to serve as a forum for buying/selling just about everything.
Buying something that has “had a previous owner” is good for the environment, your budget and maybe even allows you to find something that you are unable to buy otherwise (like a teak desk!). Challenge yourself to make “used” as your default option for purchasing whenever you can.
So many new products and services come about because of an additional feature or enhanced component but think about the success stories that are because of what they subtracted.
Acute care centers created a whole new level of medical treatment when they did without the extensive services that an emergency room can provide. Southwest captured the vacation traveler niche when it did without in-flight amenities and complex booking procedures. A whole category of budget hotels became popular by foregoing room service, restaurants and concierges. Planet Fitness focused on the average person who wanted to stay in shape and left the serious bodybuilders to go elsewhere.
Dry shampoo is a whole new market that left the water behind. Pepper focused on whole peppercorns and fresh grinders without worrying about the salt component to the spice set. Salt created its own niche with a push for sea salt as a premium product. Our local movie theatre made a name for itself for its popcorn as much as for its movies.
Opportunities abound when you decouple items that are traditionally paired and focus on creating a uniqueness with one component. The next time you’re looking to provide something new ask yourself what you should leave out to achieve it.
