Recently I had to face some uncomfortable facts. As someone who is working hard on creating a Personal Transformation System with my pal Nick, part of my goal is to help others be organized, focused, happy, successful, and motivated. But ironically, I suddenly found myself disorganized, unfocused, unhappy, and not feeling especially successful. At least I was still motivated! But what had happened?

Being Organized – The Map is not the Road

One of the little dangers of having a lot of organizational tools is that if you’re not careful, you spend more time working on planning than actually DOING things. I’ve always been alert to this; I’ve seen people spend weeks setting up software like ACT! and then using it for nothing more than storing contacts. Or setting up QuickBooks, and using it primarily as an invoice generator. Or loading up their smartphone with email functionality, and then never being able to find a message or attachment on their phone OR their computer.

Another thing you may run into once you do a lot of elaborate planning is that you probably have lots of deadlines – some of which affect each other, some of which don’t relate to others at all! Your head can quickly become a spaghetti bowl of overlapping timelines and goals, and leave you feeling more disorganized and plan-less than if you had never organized a plan! It’s like driving down the freeway with a bunch of maps on your lap, but not knowing what town you’re in.

Scope Creep and Product vs. Process – The Destination is not the Road Either!

If you have a “one widget business”, I envy you. Sometimes I’m tempted to chuck all my activities, and open a chocolate chip cookie shop. I know there’s a demand, I make a pretty mean chocolate chip cookie, and what could be more fun than baking cookies all day! Plus, you could make employee performance jokes with your staff constantly, like “whaddya want, a COOKIE?” But alas, I am gifted/cursed with a brain that explodes with pretty decent ideas on a regular basis, and my real challenge is filtering things down to the achievable ones and focusing on them.

Most of what I’m about to say would be different if my ventures were well-capitalized, but like many of us, my business is about 80% sweat equity at the moment. So the problem arises when I take one of my product ideas and walk it through the logical steps. I’m going to reference some basic items here that you may have to work through to roll out a product. They may overlap, they may not ALL be necessary as discrete steps, but they all are necessary in ONE way or another. And the list is by no means all-inclusive:

Creating the Product:

Ideation & Conceptualization
Prototyping/Designing/Outlining
Sourcing Services/Materials
Package Design
Setting up production

Taking it to Market:

Identifying place in market
Marketing
Sales
Advertising

Okay, that’s already a lot of stuff. I’m lucky in a way, in that I have the skills and knowledge to execute almost all of those tasks. But that can also quickly devour me. Walking a single product or service through this is not rocket science, it’s just work and persistence. But what if it’s necessary to create two or three products at the same time? Or if – as is often the case these days – the product is sort of a marketing piece in itself, and is interdependent with other products, services, or marketing strategies that have to be rolled out at the same time? Like social media, websites, seminars, and an actual retail product? Where do the product and business end, and the marketing and sales begin?

This is where I personally got derailed recently; as well as trying to wrap up some other projects, I was creating a book with Nick. After completing the writing and distribution arrangements for the book, we got so focused on marketing the thing that we kind of forgot that it wasn’t our magnum opus, or even a “core product”. It was originally meant to be a vehicle for building out our production and sales channels, and creating a standard product development process. In this case for a book. It should be simple – write the book, find a way to publish and distribute it (we did, it’s on Amazon now), and then do some promotion. But several things then came into play. They can be summarized with a just a few concepts:

Robot-Brained Marketing Strategies

Be thorough, but use some common sense or simple analysis before you roll out that multi-platform marketing campaign! Just because we have hundreds of marketing channels at our disposal doesn’t mean we have to utilize them ALL. There’s a strong tendency at present to put a lot of effort into “social”, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, etc. Facebook in particular is a possible paper tiger and time-sink rolled into one. Yes, there are a HALF BILLION USERS. But how can you really connect? Sharing in your own network? Maybe, but that’s likely to come across as spam. Advertising? Sure. So you place an ad. It better have lots of cha though, or you’re wasting your time. And assuming you DO get users to click, where do you take them? To a page to buy a product? Why would they do THAT? Is it remarkably unique? Is it REALLY CHEAP? Is there some other reward? I’m focusing on Facebook here, because it’s still so popular right now, but I could do the same with any channel that one might think is of value as a marketing tool. CHOOSE YOUR CHANNELS INTELLIGENTLY.

There are 168 Hours in a Week

I learned that with my very first business, a small 24/7 telecom company. Most people sleep at least 56 of those hours. That leaves 116. Subtract about 21 hours for eating-related activities, and you have 91 left. If all you want to do with your life is eat, sleep, and work (like me, apparently) then you’re all set. But seriously. When do you plan to execute all these crazy marketing ideas? Assuming you already have a product, how long does it take to create a good campaign, with decent images and copy? How long does it take to actually place the ads? If the marketing ideas are meant to generate user-engagement, how much of that can be fully automated? Do you have time for the parts that can’t if you get a good conversion rate? Have you scripted all the nice responses for your registration thank you emails? After you’ve laid out all these plans and executed them, ask yourself – could you have sold more copies of your book by standing on a street corner for the same amount of time? BE REAL ABOUT TIME AND USE IT WELL.

Are You Happy?

Oh yeah. Isn’t that why we started a business in the first place? Of course, there’s that whole “making money” thing, but let’s face it. Unless you’re fueling a business with outside capital (an entirely different game) you’d probably make a lot more money with a high-paying job than by starting your own business. So you might as well be ENJOYING things, right? And that, to me, is the number one priority. It’s just that my passion for keeping things moving, doing things in the smartest way possible, and being as thorough as possible can all work at cross purposes. If you ever find yourself in the same boat, step back and ask yourself some reasonable questions:

Am I doing too many things at once?
If so, thin things out, and extend deadlines if necessary. Give things the attention they deserve.

Who made these deadlines, anyway?
Oh yeah. That was me. And I’m a FREAK. Let’s just revise those a bit when needed!

Is this task even in the right bucket?
Don’t confuse advertising with marketing, or marketing with sales, even though they overlap.
Don’t confuse website development with product development. Unless of course the website IS the product.

Am I thinking like a businessperson?
This gets me a LOT. I love some of the creative work I do so much that I often forget that time equals money.

Can I outsource this?
Just because you have the skills to do something doesn’t mean you’re the best person to do it.
Could someone do it just as well, and a lot faster?
Can you AFFORD to outsource it? If you’re not prepared to pay to have it done, ponder its value in the first place.

Are you enjoying your work?
Because no-one is MAKING you do it.
Take a break and hit a lot of reset buttons if you need to.
Get back to the things that launched you on the journey in the first place.

When you find the right path, you’ll know it, because success, happiness, and wealth will simply be happening.

What’s stopping you from doing it? Is it money? Time? Is there some class you need to take first, or some kind of equipment you need? It seems like everyone we know has a dream or a business idea, but precious few seem to execute the ideas and make the millions they think that idea is worth. I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone at points in my life; but what is it that stops us from pursuing the grand visions in our hearts and heads?

It’s Not A Lack Of Tools

I regularly marvel at the fact that we actually accomplish so little given what is available right at our fingertips. I sometimes think that maybe it’s the VERY AVAILABILITY of these tools that prevents us from doing things. I’m going to use a few examples, ranging from the small and personal to the grand and history-making.

The Small & Personal: My Magazine

Ever since I was a teen (before personal computers even existed) I’ve had a sort of fantasy about publishing a magazine. I mean a real, turn-the-pages, high quality magazine. I’ve realized a less-tangible version of that dream in creating sites like the one you’re on right now, or my pop culture site Dissociated Press. But the funny thing is that the only time I created a real, physical publication was way before I had all the amazingly powerful tools that are right inside the average personal computer these days. In the 80′s, I did a short run of a self-published magazine with a few friends. We used dry transfer letters, cut-and-paste, and TYPEWRITERS! It actually didn’t look too shabby. We would print it at the local copy shop and hand-assemble it. And I would argue that the challenge of thinking it wasn’t possible is what drove us to actually do it! Meeting and arguing about layout and content, having to actually MAKE SOMETHING WITH OUR HANDS really put a special spin on it. I could open Creative Suite 5 right now and get to work on a new magazine, and in spite of the fact that I could actually create a print-ready publication, the process would feel empty, and distant, and theoretical. And I’m probably not going to do it any time soon.

The Grand & History Making

Two amazing things happened back in the sixties. One was that a lot of people suddenly sensed that something was wrong in our culture. That people should be treated more equally, and that maybe we needed to be a little more responsible to the world around us, and our fellow humans. The other was that someone pointed at the moon, and said “let’s go there!”, and for some crazy reason a bunch of other people agreed. So a civil rights movement was born, with no Internet, no cell phones – hell, no PHONES in many cases, and around the same time, a bunch of people got together and built a bunch of 300 foot tall rockets to send men to the moon, three at a time. Can you imagine either of those things happening today?

Source

As the humorous internet meme featured above points out, available technology seems to have little impact one’s actual desire to DO something. I would argue the same about other momentous and brave acts through history. GPS is available all over the world. The “G” is for “global”, in case you forgot. Can you imagine what Magellan’s journey was actually like? No electronic navigation, no idea what weather lay ahead, no ENGINE for cryin’ out loud! Heck, before Magellan, that whole “globe” issue was still a hotly debated topic itself. Or the Declaration of Independence? Setting pen to paper – when a “pen” was a fancy stick that you dipped in ink and used to scratch words onto animal skin – was a far different process in those days. It’s pretty likely that you had put some thought into things before you bothered creating an actual document. Can you imagine the founding fathers hunched over Microsoft Word 76, typing, deleting, trying to get the typeface right, with Clippy popping up saying “You appear to be trying to write a declaration of independence, would you like help with that?”

So What Is It That Really Makes Things Happen?

I’m going to take a stab at this, and then turn around and see if anything I’m pursuing passes muster. Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts; when I’m done with THAT assessment I might have lots of time on my hands to post and review your ideas.

Vision vs Seeing

If you just look at the moon, and say “wow, that is really beautiful”, that’s kind of a nice thing. But there’s no vision in just seeing. Vision would be “That is really beautiful! I must paint a tribute to it!” or “That is an amazing recurring sight in the sky! I must erect Stonehenge!” or “Wow, that looks amazing! I think I will go there!” Seeing a problem or a possibility is hardly the same as DOING something about it, and the impetus to act usually comes from a vision. A dream. A hoped for outcome that is larger than simply accomplishing the original task. As in the case of a civil rights movement, where the real dream was a better world MADE POSSIBLE by equality, not simply creating equality for its own sake.

Insurmountable Challenge

I would argue that intrinsic to many truly worthwhile ventures is a significant – if not insurmountable – challenge. Sure, you know that if you REALLY WANTED to, you could use email, Twitter, Facebook, and direct mail to launch a product or promote an idea. But will you? Even a lot of people who really aggressively put these ideas to work fail. But what if you found out your child or other loved one was going to die within 30 days, and the only way they could be saved is if you raised enough money for a special procedure. I bet you’d take all this knowledge and MAKE IT WORK. Or figure out an even more clever way to achieve your goal. Illumination without fire? IMPOSSIBLE! Human flight? IMPOSSIBLE! Cure Polio? IMPOSSIBLE! The list of things that were achieved exactly because they were impossible is quite lengthy. What’s the challenge in your dream? Is there one? If there isn’t, what will drive you to realize such a dream?

Planning, Passion, Purpose & Persistence

Planning things can be critical to making things happen, but plans are useless without the other three “P” words above. The “purpose” of going to the moon was probably not just to study the place, grab a few rocks and come back with them. Arguably the greater “purpose” was a massive proof of concept of two globally competing ideologies, i.e., capitalism and communism. The fact that human values seemed to be at stake imbued the venture with a sense of purpose, and gave participants the passion and persistence necessary to achieve the goal. Do you know the root of the word “passion”? It’s from the Late Latin word “passio”, which means “suffering” and “submission”. If you’ve ever passionately pursued something, you know that being passionate doesn’t mean you’re just intensely drawn to something, it means you’re willing to suffer for it. There are reasons that people have an almost religious relationship with the products of companies like Apple. Sure, the company is fundamentally driven by the same motives as other tech companies, but the reason the iPad is the iPad and other tablets are still just tablets is largely because of the passion and sense of purpose the creators embodied. Aside from the intense commitment to excellence that Steve Jobs imbued in his underlings, the iPod, iPhone, and iPad weren’t just refined versions of existing devices or concepts, they had visions of a greater purpose that drove them far beyond the hardware. They were all tools for massively distributing content and applications that people were hungry for, something other tablet makers still don’t seem to have grasped, except perhaps in the case of the Kindle.

So as I said above, feel free to chime in. Unless I can actually apply all these ideas to my OWN ventures and not scrub them the same day, I’m going to have a lot of leisure time soon.

As a kid, did you ever see the “Goofy Gophers” cartoon, in which the two characters Mac and Tosh were so incredibly considerate that it seemed they would never accomplish anything, always saying things like “You first, my dear,” and “But, no, no, no. It must be you who goes first!”, or agreeing with each others’ unnecessarily complex phrases with a hearty “Indubitably”? I was recently reminded of these two rascally but respectful rodents as I sat in on a meeting of a group of political activists. I use the term “activist” loosely; in spite of the fact that I vigorously support the aims of this particular group, I doubt they’ll ever accomplish anything, and I find sitting in on meetings with them almost excruciating. Why? Because of a phenomena we’re all at least a little familiar with, i.e., the dreaded groupthink.

Collectivity & Cooperation vs Procedural Paralysis

I’ve always been a team player myself. In fact, one of the cornerstones of the method I bring to any work I do is the demand that all involved parties are committed to the good of the task at hand, and not bound by their ego-driven attachment to the ideas they have about it. I believe in that mysterious “It Factor”, the idea that for virtually everything around us, there’s a best natural manifestation of the “soul” of the thing, whether it’s the sculpture that a certain piece of marble should be, or the way a song should be played by a particular group at a certain moment, or the way a room should be arranged. Or the results of a group of people’s collective action. But this is a fine balance. Being respectful of everyone involved in something does not, in my opinion, mean that everyone deserves a 100% equal voice. I’ve always known this theoretically, but had never seen it in action until recently. The main problem with attempting absolute consensus is two-fold, and will manifest in the worst way when 1.) A really bad idea is the first one agreed upon for consideration, and 2.) the group maintains 100% commitment to respecting the possible validity of the idea and the input of everyone involved, no matter how inane their perspective is. In the case of the group I was working with recently, matters were made worse by the fact that even the basic procedures of the meeting were open to discussion, so before even discussing any action, literally an hour was spent on discussing discussion procedure.

Benevolent Dictators & Ego Collisions

Although I’m a big fan of the “benevolent dictator” in many situations – a great film director or stage manager are great examples – if a group is committed to 100% consensual processes, there are probably only two solutions – which I’ll get to in a moment – and which won’t allow for well-intentioned assertiveness. The common response of someone who sees this paralysis occurring and actively tries to fix it is usually implosively catastrophic. The person will usually preface what they say with “I have over X number of years experience with” and then explain why the thing they’re saying is so valuable to the group. Even if it IS valuable to the group, the only word the group hears is the “I”, and even if the person only uses the word twice at the beginning to say “when I did this I”, the group only hears the word echoing cavernously throughout the room as they imagine the person’s head swelling like a cartoon as they self-aggrandize, wondering when they’ll ever shut up so the group can get back to groupthinking.

Assertions As Questions

This is the oldest managerial trick in the book; everyone knows that the best way to get someone to do something is to ask them, and that people will be most on board with something when they feel like it was their idea. If a group has actually CHOSEN groupthink as their preferred method though, the only hope of re-directing the train of thought is to find some incredibly passive way of injecting a new idea. And this is dangerous ground. The problem is that the flawed thinking of the group is usually so painfully obvious that it almost enrages the parties who see the problem, so it’s almost impossible to actually assert an idea, even if it is completely based on verifiable facts. The idea has to be posed as a question about a possibility, and one has to tread lightly to avoid being bluntly critical of the existing trainwreck that is already in motion, or risk being permanently and subtly ostracized or marginalized by the group.

Or You Can Take Your Marbles And Go Home

Depending on what’s at stake, and how bad the groupthink is, it may be worth sticking around and being patient. And patient you will have to be, because the kind of material that’s often referenced for consensus decision making is material like this Seeds for Change Guide for Consensus Decision Making. The methods themselves will be alien to many, and the procedures are elaborate, so you can easily spend hours just outlining procedures and training the facilitators to implement them. And who will still be around at that point to listen? Well, probably not me. As a person with a strong team spirit, I like actually playing the game, and maybe WINNING, and have no desire to disrupt the fun of others. I’m probably more apt to take my marbles and go play elsewhere. And I think it’s important to realize that this can be as productive and cooperative as staying and acquiescing to the group. Chances are that unless you’re literally maladjusted in some way, there are probably other people in the group who feel the same way, and you can start a new game with them!

Ethics 101 – The Forgotten Business Course

The problems of mass production often stem from the same process as the benefits. In the beginning, this may be a superficial complaint, as poignantly highlighted in the familiar Henry Ford quote “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black”. The obvious benefits of mass-production – reduced human error, a reduction in labor costs, and increased production – intrinsically create a few problems. One is the superficial kind just mentioned, the inability to tailor the product to a customer’s whims. But the greater problems are the result of either legitimate unintended consequences, like the detrimental health effects of eating McDonald’s highly-processed foods, the destruction of family farms by agribusiness, or the toxic wasteland that we’ve created through our hunger for more and more at a lower price, or another kind of more INTENTIONAL consequence. If the elements of the game are as simple as “create a product at the lowest possible price and sell it for the highest possible price”, someone, somewhere, is going to pay. And when the entity making those decisions is an amoral collection of guidelines designed solely to maximize profit to please stakeholders – the long term price is hardly worth the cash savings at the time of purchase. For companies like McDonald’s and their competitors to have food outlets all around the globe, and for two thirds of the world to have a cell phone, a lot of “someones” had to make the decisions to utilize nearly slave-like labor, to destructively mine rare minerals to create throw-away devices that return to the environment in massive toxic dumps, or to engineer food that is shippable and attractive but has no flavor and questionable nutritional value.

This Soapbox Makes Me Feel Pretty Tall!

So all I’m really saying here is that I think morality in business skipped a generation, and if you’re planning a global empire to deliver your widget, why not throw some basic forward thinking into the mix? While the iPad, for instance, is an amazing device, its artificially low price was made possible largely by sending jobs overseas, massively underpaying THOSE workers, and marketing it with a “sin of omission” lie, which was failing to tell the marketplace that it was a walled garden media platform. And if you’re a big Apple fan (I personally love their products) you may be shocked to learn that the company engages in virtually zero charitable donations. Is that really success? I don’t think so. Not if our grandkids can’t afford to pay their electric bill and recharge the thing because they spent all their money on potable water and health care.

*steps down from soapbox*

The Work You’re Doing Today May Be Your MBA Program

If you don’t feel like picking up a copy of that Forbes Greatest Business Stories book that I mentioned above, there’s a lengthy excerpt here that includes a part of the story that suddenly resonated in a powerful way for me upon re-reading it. And that part of the story was the part immediately BEFORE where the McDonald’s tale really begins. It mirrors something that I’m sure is true for thousands of us pursuing various careers, but that few fail to capitalize on. In that excerpt, the author points out that Kroc had spent “thirty years selling paper products and milk-shake machines to restaurants all over the nation”. And that “In his journeys, Kroc saw an astonishing variety of operations – coffee shops, mom-and-pop dinettes, diners, burger stands, and ice-cream chains like Tastee-Freez – and became something of an expert on the low end of the American restaurant scene”. Were you paying attention just now? Ostensibly, Kroc was a “paper products and milk-shake machine salesman”. But his job in fact allowed him to observe – in a way that no business researcher possibly could – the inner workings of hundreds, if not thousands of different foodservice businesses. To the uninspired sales rep whose only aim is meeting and/or exceeding his numbers – the common framework of even the most successful sales professionals – this career of Kroc’s may have had an abysmally dull end, as the aging sales guy lost his edge, and ended up living on some meager retirement he may or may not have been smart enough to assemble. But Kroc kept his eyes open and his brain switched on, and recognized the goldmine of the real-world foodservice research lab that was right in front of him every day. I personally began applying a similar concept just a couple of years ago, which has led me to doing consulting, authoring a couple of books, and preparing to position myself as an “expert”. I am quite confident I have found my truer path, and am already beginning to feel the early success of my efforts in this new direction. My story has a similar arc, in that for over a decade, I worked with dozens of small and medium businesses on a rather intimate level, mostly helping them refine their digital media or marketing strategies. I didn’t come away from that decade with millions in net worth or a huge revenue stream, but I came away with something I now know is even MORE valuable, which is the knowledge of a hundred ways to fail or be mediocre, and the mindset that makes that path a near certainty for an entrepreneur. We’ll see if I end up building a multi-billion dollar empire like Kroc, but one thing I’m CERTAIN that I – and perhaps you – DO have in common with Kroc, is that by working hard on one thing, but keeping my eyes open to others – I have basically put myself through business school, and gotten paid to do it! Is there a learning opportunity in YOUR life that you’re overlooking? You don’t have to be a traveling salesman to learn from the work experience around you, you just have to remember to pay attention in business class!

Next time: Why you probably don’t want to actually be like Ray Kroc.

Recently Nick and I asked ourselves “How come our meetings are so dang productive?” We often accomplish more in a thirty minute meeting than we do with other people in TWO HOUR meetings. Who has two and three hour meetings, anyway? Three hour meetings always make me think of what happened to Gilligan and the gang when taking this kind of leisure cruise of productivity. And as much as I might enjoy being trapped on a deserted island with Marianne, I have things I’d like to do first. So what’s our big secret? As Nick and I discussed it, we isolated a few simpler points, but as I pondered the idea, something else occurred to me that is a little more “play and creativity” oriented. I’ll share that after the basics about why meetings in general are often not only unproductive, but COUNTERproductive.

Meetings vs Blamestorming

So first let’s make a disctinction here. I think of meetings and actual work as separate things. Meetings are for reviewing, assessing, communicating, deciding, and planning. If you’re on a team of political strategists, your meetings of course may be most of the work you do. But if you’re in any kind of production oriented work, whether it’s running a publication, building cars, or playing in a band, the bulk of the work is done elsewhere. Meetings are for fine-tuning a process, they shouldn’t BE the process. They also shouldn’t be thought of as a grievance forum. Actual grievances should be addressed directly in a separate process, whether it’s an honest one-on-one dialog, a “complaint box”, or forming a union and going on strike. Of course, good management should be aware enough of grievances to avoid that last option, but blamestorming sessions are worse than counterproductive, they can even be destructive.

The Secrets To Efficient & Productive Meetings

So the actual mechanisms behind quick and purposeful meetings are incredibly simple. Which may be the exact reason so many people overlook them. They’re just too darn easy. Below are a few really simple methods for keeping meetings quick and painless. Leaving more time for the kids, golf, laying on the beach, wasting time on the web, or that new knitting pattern you’ve been dying to try.

1.) Know Why You’re Meeting
You’d be surprised how many people don’t use simple lists, or routinely discover what they’re talking about WHILE THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT IT. Before you even arrange a meeting, identify key topics, put them in concise lists, and identify specific tasks or needs under each item.

2.) Share The Memo
Yeah, the old workplace joke about “didn’t you get the memo” is all fine and dandy. Until someone PUTS OUT AN EYE. Which is what I personally do to people who act like you should know what they’re thinking. Before the actual meeting, share the list. Let’s use the archaic term “agenda”. I break up the tedium of this with amusing subject lines in the email like “Here’s The Plan Stan”. And continue at the top of the message with “What’s the agenda, Brenda? The arc, Mark? The deal, Neil? The intent, Kent?”

3.) Time Is An Illusion
“Lunch time doubly so”, as Douglas Adams said. Which is poppycock. Time is a reliable, mechanized measurement. The human mouth can only form words at a rate defined by its physical limitations, and although some human brains seem to utilize their neural networks more or less efficiently than others, the nerve impulsives themselves move at a fairly consistent rate. Know your material, and know how much you can talk about in an hour.

4.) The Time Barrier
Ever notice how people (maybe even YOU) tend to hit a point during classes or meetings where they just start nodding off? We’ve all been there. One minute you seem fully concious, the next you suddently jolt upright with spittle on your chin, with a murmur of voices bubbling in your head. You have just hit the t-~i~-m-~e  b-~a~-r-~r~-i-~e~-r. A combination of decreased blood flow and blood sugar cycles mean that the optimum uninterrupted meeting time is under an hour. Common wisdom says that it’s about 45-50 minutes. No matter what you’re doing at this point in a meeting, take a break. Ten minutes is probably good. Longer, and you risk losing focus.

5.) Pretend You’re In A Band
This is the more “play and creativity” oriented thing I mentioned at the top. If you’ve ever played music with others (Nick & I had a band years ago) you know that there’s a sort of point/counterpoint that occurs in a lot of ways. I think this is a reflexive underpinning of how our meetings work, and it’s not that hard to break down the elements:

a.) Know the difference between “jamming” and the disciplined playing of a part.
Nick and I keep an ongoing acute awareness of whether or not we’ve digressed. Digression is inevitable, but when we do it, we allow it for a moment, perhaps apologize if it’s lengthy, and then zero back in on the topic.

b.) Limit the solos, or have a cigar.
Counterpoint is the basis of all great songs. When someone has a good riff going, let it rip. If it’s turning into self-indulgent bandstanding, be comfortable checking or being checked on it. “Soloing” isn’t the same as digressing. It’s hogging. I used to keep a wrapped cigar at meetings. When someone went on a big ego kick, I’d hand them the cigar. This became a regular part of our meetings; a humorous way to check someone’s soapboxing.

c.) Parts is Parts
I worked with a successful session musician and songwriter years ago. He would jokingly say “parts is parts”, referencing the fact that the best pop songs were really just good “parts” strung together artfully. This is true with work and planning too. Know how to break things into their components, and how they relate. Some projects spin off into related ideas, and if you don’t know the song well enough, you end up with a plodding, forced medley of ideas instead of focused, deliverable results.

6.) Know Why You’re Meeting
I already said this, right? But this is where WAY too many people screw up. At the end of a poorly executed meeting, everyone just wants to be done with things and move on to their next activity, right? Well first of all, try to get the meeting flow working so that at the end of the allotted time, you have about ten minutes to review what you’ve covered, so you can streamline the notes for the next meeting, and keep momentum. When you actually wrap up this way, meetings feel GREAT. It feels like you nailed the resolving note in an orchestral piece, and can literally go “TA DA!” When you walk out of the meeting, you should feel freer and more at ease than when you walked in.

Is Your Business Like A Business, Or Like A Band?

Bands and non-profits have a few interesting things in common. The first is that they’re often started by someone who is extremely passionate about something. The second is that the term “non-profit” is useful in referring to them. And the third is that the person that started them is often so convinced of the value of what they’re doing that they forget that the world doesn’t really give a damn what they think. Having worked with both, and having also worked on developing more “businessy” businesses, I’ve seen both how businesses fail by acting like bands, and bands fail by failing to act like businesses. I’ll be touching on ideas for treating your band like a business in a separate piece, but something worth asking yourself is the reverse – is your business like a band? The ability to blast ahead simply because you’re passionate about something is the very foundation of successful entrepeneurship. But do you treat your venture as some brilliant creation, convinced that someday its genius will be discovered, making you millions? Maybe it’s time to see how your business “charts”. If it were a pop song, where would it be on the Billboard Top 100? And if you even said “99″, is that really even close to true, or are you stuck back in the dreamy-eyed “visioning” stage that inspired you at the outset? One acid-test would be to look around yourself right now. Are there a bunch of sycophants surrounding you, trying to get on your good side so they can get a backstage pass into your methods? Were you written up in Fortune this week? Are you reading this as you fly in your private jet to a tropical getaway? In an upcoming piece, we’ll talk about about scheduled assessments are a crucial part of even the smallest, simplest freelance business. We’ll probably have a quick meeting about it first though.

So my friend’s dream for now is just that – a dream. And a pricey one. What she needs to do is turn the dream into a vision, and then a plan, and in no time she’d be in the saddle. In her case this would be as simple as renting out unused buildings, connecting with a trainer who needs a facility, or defining the business plan and committing some capital to bump all the resources into the level of a functioning revenue-generator. I personally think she’ll pull it off. She’s a driven person. But for a while she’s made the mistake a lot of people make, which is talking about how nice the horses are instead of getting on and riding them.

I see this problem all around me, every day. I even fall into the trap myself on occasion. A classic example would be in politics. This is intended as observational; I don’t consider myself a Republican or a Democrat. But I pay a lot of attention to politics, because political agendas shape the very fabric of our lives, and political strategists are amongst the savviest marketers out there. Now that I’ve over-prefaced what I’m about to say, here it is: Democrats in America have been failing to get their needs met for quite some time because they like talking about the fine points of the horses instead of getting on them and riding. I have a lot of really intelligent friends who are Democrats, but they seem to confuse their insightful commentary about politics, social evolution, and history with actually DOING something. Smart Republicans know this, and frame the dialog with over-the-top agendas, so that while the Democrats spend all their time talking about how over-the-top the agenda is, the agenda actually gets pushed through. Other examples include people who take part in clever marketing campaigns disguised as non-profit fund-raising, or spend a lot of time fussing over what they recycle or what fish they don’t eat while they drive their SUV to the corner store.

So how do you go about getting in the saddle instead of talking about the horse? I’m not even going to dignify that with a response. Beyond “just shut up and get on the horse, dangit”. Like Will Rogers said:

Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.