CoveyLink

Did you Know? Paradigm shifting YouTube

link — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:00:57 +0000

There is a compelling YouTube video called Did You Know? (you may want to turn down your speakers a little) that will stretch your thinking. Over 4 million views. At the end it asks: So what does it all mean? To us it means Trust matters more than ever. It reminds us why sparking a global renaissance of trust is such a critical imperative.

The Ripple Effect

link — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:55:09 +0000

We often ask the question: who do you trust? to organizational leaders and workers around the globe. In both the public and the private sectors there is now an uneasy caution about who you can trust. The more penetrating question is who trusts you? Imagine if you could grow trust in an environment of ever decreasing trust. What a competitive advantage that would be. It is more important than ever for you to give people someone they can trust. Starting with your self by behaving and leading in ways that inspire trust creates a ripple effect of influence.

Test this for yourself. Think of the person you trust the most. What is it like to work with or be with that person? Do they have influence on you because you trust them? Does it speed up business to work with them? What IF? What if, everyone on your team had that level of trust? At worst it would be a lot more energizing to work together. At best trust makes the playing field really fast and becomes a performance multiplier that has a ripple effect on your team and your organization.

Transformation vs. Change

link — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:52:20 +0000

So much talk about change. Seems like change is like re arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Changing the contents rather than the context. Change re arranges the contents of the BOX while true transformation takes place outside the box and expands the box. The edge of what you don’t know you don’t know. The Speed of Trust is a transformative influence not a intellectual one. Your credibility is based on your behavior–your walk not just your talk. Transformation is experiential and is a change of heart and behavior not just a change in thought. Ultimately you transform your track record by behaving your way out of problems, not talking your way out. As with Susan Boyle’s dramatic example–RESULTS convert the cynics!

Carrot Principle: New study shows 65% never praised by boss

link — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:37:36 +0000

Showing loyalty by giving credit where credit is due is a way to make massive deposits in people’s trust account. As Robert Townsend former CEO of Avis said: “It’s been my experience that the people who gain trust, loyalty, excitement, and energy fast are the ones who pass on the credit to the people who have really done the work. A leader doesn’t need the credit…they get more credit than they deserve anyway.” As our friend and associate Dottie Gandy emphasizes: ” it is not only important to give credit to people for what they do it is also important to acknowledge people for who they are.”

In the new edition of The Carrot Principle:How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent, and Accelerate Performance authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton found that 79% of talent that left organizations did so for lack of appreciation and 65% in North America report they were not recognized in the least bit in the last year. These two statistics alone are worth the price of this book but they have interviewed over 200,000 workers and the results will shock you. I know it did me. This one is a must read for anyone who manages people regardless of the setting including parents and teachers! Lack of giving credit is clearly one of the high costs of low trust.

Twitter’s Speed of Trust ripple of influence

link — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:43:04 +0000

Twitter is remarkable. Follow us. I ignored it too long thinking it was not scalable or professionally relevant. My strategic business thinking is obviously sometimes my biggest handicap. I was wrong, it scales the entire globe. It is both personal, i keep up with kids and grandkids, and professional, I connect and communicate with like minded thinkers around the world. Short story first. A new friend on twitter Dinesh connected me to some wonderful TV footage on the Economist of an interview with Jaya Kumar, the Chief Marketing Officer of one of our clients, FritoLay, and Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com talking about trust, transparency, high trust culture and specifically the Speed of Trust. This is something that in the “old days” in the late 80’s early 90’s when we launched the 7 Habits book would have slipped through our fingers and not been shared with as broad and committed of an audience. This conversation would not have been transparent to me so that I could engage it, leverage it and share it. I also now have the opportunity and intend to acknowledge and thank Jaya for it.

Another new friend in Denmark gave me tips on what to see on my upcoming trip to Amsterdam. Another did the same in London.

The longer story that comes to mind is the significance of the realization of the transcendent potential of the world wide web so eloquently described by Christopher Locke at the turn of the century (the 21st century that is) in 2000 in his book the cluetrain manifesto:

“More important, all of us are finding our voices once again. Learning how to talk to one another. Slowly recovering from a near fatal brush with zombification after watching Night of the Living Sponsor reruns all of our lives. Inside, Outside, there’s a conversation going on today that wasn’t happening at all 5 years ago (95) and hasn’t been very much in evidence since the Industrial Revolution began. Now, spanning the planet via Internet and World Wide Web, this conversation is so vast, so multifaceted, that trying to figure what it is about is futile. It’s about a billion years of pent-up hopes and fears and dreams coded in serpentine double helixes, the collective flashback deja vu of our strange perplexing species. Something ancient, elemental, sacred, something very very funny that’s broken loose in the pipes and wires of the 21st century. There are millions of threads in this conversation, but at the beginning and end of each one is a human being… This fervid desire for the Web bespeaks a longing so intense that it can only be understood as spiritual. A longing indicates something is missing in our lives. What is missing is the sound of the human voice. The spiritual lure of the Web is the promise of the return of voice.“

Twitter is clearly a giant leap forward in that direction.

Speed of Trust in Globe and Mail, Canada’s Largest Paper

link — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:42:22 +0000

The Globe and Mail is considered Canada’s national paper with over 1 million readers. Stephen was interviewed by Sarah Boesveld last week and his remarks appeared in today’s Globe and Mail in an article entitled Ambiguity Anxiety. Stephen had this to say about the pressure on trust in the current crisis when managers are secretive: ”They tend to be done without very much openness, without very much transparency – people in rooms all day long behind closed doors. And when they emerge, managers dish out spin and don’t give employees the straight goods,” he says.

Amazon Kindle

link — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:16:17 +0000

I finally got an Amazon Kindle 2 and must say so far it has exceeded my expectations. The ability to word search all your books alone is worth the ride. The Speed of Trust is available in a Kindle version and searching that on the fly has proved very useful. It holds 1500 books which beats the 500 or so that crowd my office. You can take notes but it definitely is not as intuitive as a pen and highlighter but I am getting used to it. It feels miraculous to not carry the 3 to 4 books I usually end up traveling with and you can easily read several at a time as it picks up where you left off so it is simple to read several books simultaneously. The digital paper is also surprisingly easy to read even in sunlight. While off, the Kindle displays delightful pencil sketches of authors. It rotates randomly and one day it displayed the definition of Kindle: light or set fire, arouse or inspire (an emotion or feeling), become impassioned or exited. I can not yet say that my Kindle has impassioned me but you can say it has re-kindled my goal to meet the challenge that Dr. Stephen R. Covey gave to me years ago: to read a book a week. Most years I have not hit that goal but I have a couple of years past and I will say that his challenge has dramatically increased the number of books I have read in the last 22 years and that is a HABIT worth having. Maybe it is The 9th Habit!

Correction Dr. Covey!

link — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:48:51 +0000

In the foreword of his game changing new book for education, The Leader In Me my good friend Dr. Stephen R. Covey misspoke. Rare for him. With this the 20th anniversary year of his landmark book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People it’s about time I tell one on him. My dear Dr. C, the comment in the foreword that I take such exception to is your reference to the 7 Habits that “the book caught a wave that even I had no way of anticipating”. Not only did you anticipate it, you willed it into being. You epitomize Jim Collins level 5 leader that he refers to in Good to Great as having a perfect blend of deep personal humility and intense professional will.

I remember it clearly, I had only worked with Dr. Covey for a couple of years and we were having a meeting with our publisher Simon & Schuster in thier headquarters in Rockafeller Center in New York City. Their entire team met with us around the big round marble table on the executive floor. I considered myself an optimist even then but Dr. C exceeded my expectations. This was 1989 and we were trying to convince the S&S brain-trust that they should do a first print run of 100,000 copies for The 7 Habits, which for a first time business author was unheard of. I can still see the S&S executives rolling their eyes as we suggested such an absurd proposal. (You S&S folks know who you are). It gets better. As support for his request Dr. C proceeded to inform them that he predicted that 7 Habits would sell 10 million copies by the end of it’s first decade. You could have heard a pin drop as the S&S executives looked at each other like whose gonna be the one that tells this guy he is out of his ever loving mind and is as naive as a country bumpkin (from Utah no less). Well, you know the rest of the story, 7 Habits did sell over 10 million copies the first decade and darn near an additional 10 million in the second decade and is still a top 100 book of all books on Amazon as we speak.

How do you get over being intimidated by somebody?

link — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:42:40 +0000

Arnold Palmer was asked: How do you get over being intimidated by somebody? Answer: Beat them at golf.

War in the Boardroom

link — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 23:45:42 +0000

Al Ries and his daughter Laura’s new book War in the Boardroom: Why Left-Brain Management and Right-Brain Marketing Don’t See Eye-to-Eye–and What to Do About It is dead on insightful. Of course I am biased, I’m a serial marketeer. We built this city (read business) on rock n’ roll (read marketing). As Al and Laura point out “Perception always trumps reality.” I could not agree more. The first chapter is worth the price of the book. Al has been behind the scenes advising executives for years and supports his conclusions with plentiful evidence. This example is priceless. “We can visualize what happened in the boardroom. Grown men, with decades of experience in the automobile field, sat around a conference table and decided to launch a Volkswagen vehicle with a price tag reaching 6 digits. (we don’t know any right brain marketer who would have thought that was a good idea.)” As the adage goes visionary entrepreneurs can not manage scale but with out their vision there will be no scale to manage.