Many people associate conflict with negativity, but conflict doesn’t have to be unpleasant; it can even be enjoyable. Conflict when used in a constructive way, can bring forth great outcomes and ideas, often benefiting those who are involved by exposing them to alternative perspectives.
Yesterday, while watching the daily news, I saw a commercial that caught my attention. In order to win over new customers, this organization is using a strategy that I like very much. Their approach is creative, it’s innovative, and was sure their competitors would need to respond to this advertising campaign in some form or fashion to maintain market share.
However, after seeing this advertisement a second time, I came to the realization that this “new” approach is classic conflict avoidance. Take a look at this video clip. Can you see where I’m coming from?
Now, please correct me if I’m totally off base, (I’ll be confident and say I’m not), but don’t the fundamentals of business acumen tell us that competition is good? In a situation like this we should want to create a little constructive conflict, forcing these two companies to battle over our business. If we ask Allstate to “break up” with our existing insurance provider for us because we’re too uncomfortable to handle the situation ourselves, we’ll never know whether the current insurance provider would be able to match the offer, or offer a better deal, ultimately saving use the hassle of switching insurance providers. Come on people. Buck up! Step out of your comfort zone and grow a little! Given this type of situation, the customer has all the power. If you add a little conflict to the mix, these two companies will need to compete for your business, “sweetening the deal,” and offering you greater gains. One company claims that it can “save you serious cash,” but the other company wants to retain business and compete for your business. Keeping a customer is much easier than winning a new one. Two companies knowingly vying for our business puts us in a great position, but if your existing insurance company gets a call from Allstate, “saving you that uncomfortable break-up moment,” your opportunity for beneficial conflict has been lost, and so has your power as a consumer.
Confront conflict head on; avoidance never hurt anybody but you.
Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.
What does trick-or-treating and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) have in common? Think about it for a moment – maximizing your gains, equations for efficiency, and opportunity costs. Are you seeing the connection yet?
Maximizing Your Profitability
I was watching a report on CNN last week about the strategies of maximizing their acquisition of treats on Halloween. Instead of just taking a “dash and grab” approach, some people take a more economic approach to their quest for sweets. The people at Zillow.com have done some research on five major cities to identify the “best” neighborhoods for trick-or-treating. While there is a common belief that wealthy neighborhoods are the prime place for harvesting the most Halloween treats, it is only a part of the equation for efficiency. To provide a more holistic approach to Halloween trick-or-treating, the Zillow Trick-or-Treat Housing Index was calculated using four equally weighted data variables: Zillow Home Value Index, population density, WalkScore (point to point distances), and local crime data. Based on those variables, this Index represents neighborhoods that will provide the most candy, with the least amount of walking and safety risks.
Jackpot
Some may find Zillow’s index to be an unnecessary approach to the trick-or-treating adventure, but for others it is just the kind of thing that makes the holiday even more enjoyable. After seeing the report on CNN, I saw this holiday as a great time to teach my kids about economics, finance, and getting the highest revenue with the least amount of input (revenue = candy). What makes this even more of an economical and financial teaching opportunity is that a local dentist is offering $1.00 for every pound of candy brought to their office during the week after Halloween. What made this offer even more interesting was that CNN also reported a statistic that the average child gathers 17.1 pounds of candy on Halloween. So, if my kids want to use Halloween as a chance to have fun and make money, there are strategies to do so.
If you ask parents today if they want their children to go through the higher education system, the answer is predominantly, “yes.” I believe preparing young people to be ready to receive a college education is as important as actually obtaining one. The same is true for anyone. There are opportunities for education and skill development all around us, just like this “trick-or-treating” example.
Education To Make A Difference
For those of us who are college age or older, but still have a desire for gaining more education, there are diverse opportunities available. There are accelerated masters programs, online degrees, and Mini-MBA Workshop. The Mini-MBA Workshop is a great way to learn the fundamental concepts taught in a traditional MBA program, but at much less costs and in a much shorter time frame. I attended this fantastic course offered by CMOE, developed and Columbia University, and taught by David L. Buckner. It helped me to understand the key concepts of economics, finance, and accounting, helping me to be more affluent in the language of business. Knowing more business acumen key terms and concepts has had a great impact on my contribution to our organization. While I didn’t earn a Masters degree, I have the ability to apply valuable concepts to my everyday efforts and decisions. As the writer and scientist, Carl Sagan wrote, “Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which information is collected and used.”
Over the past few months, I have been serving as an assistant coach for my son’s Little League Football team. It has been a lot of work to teach the boys the techniques of the sport; blocking, tackling, and running. I have found that the best way to teach children is to have fun while learning. The other coaches and I use many different games and exercises that force the boys on the team to use their new found skills and the techniques. Aside from just skill practice, these games and exercises allow us, the coaching staff, to measure their progress.
Many people struggle in the work environment because what they do no longer seems enjoyable, and learning or development just means more work. When this happens, we become stagnant. Our personal satisfaction and happiness decreases and, in turn, our success and quality of work falters. From my perspective, not enough people are making a game out of work. Consider this quote from the world renowned physicist, Albert Einstein.
“How many people are trapped in their everyday habits, part numb, part frightened, part indifferent? To have a better life we must keep choosing how we are living.”
While this quote could have many applications, I would like to discuss how it applies to our daily work. If someone is feeling numb, frightened, or indifferent toward their everyday work activity, leaders or coaches can expect this person to also feel unaccountable to results and lacking desire to achieve greater levels of success.
Since it appears that many people in the working world are feeling numb, frightened, or indifferent toward their daily work, I propose that organizations strive harder to make a game out of work by challenging their employees to compete to win. Like the way I coach the football team, leaders can make work more fun and find ways to use metrics and scorecards to measure progress. With a little fun, leaders can create a winning team that really adds to bottom line results. Leaders themselves must also have a bottom line mentality as they go about setting exciting and stretch goals for themselves, their departments, and for their team members. This inner game of work can make a huge impact on what people accomplish.
So, whether you are coaching 20 eight and nine year old boys on a Little League Football team or leading a tenured staff of employees, the concept I’m suggesting is the same. Make a game out of work; make it fun, rewarding and competitive. I guarantee you will see improved results.
Interview with Ted Zimmerman on Bottom Line Leadership In 1981 I had the honor of interviewing Ted Zimmerman. You might have a similar reaction to hearing the name as I did when I first heard it, because I had never heard of Ted Zimmerman. As a teenager Ted had been a clerk in the first self-service grocery store in America. Although there has been an unresolved debate concerning when the first self-service store actually opened, and by whom, I will go with the Safeway claim of being first, with Ted Zimmerman working as a clerk in that store on grand opening day.
S.M. Skaggs opened the store in early June 1915 in American Falls, Idaho, and within months sold the store to M.B. Skaggs, one of his six sons. Neither Ted, nor any other witness can pinpoint the date any closer than, “early June.” Prior to the advent of self-service, clerks assembled product orders from a customer provided list. But everything changed on that grand opening day in June 1915 and I was given the privilege of interviewing an elderly gentleman who was a personal witness to that historical event.
The reason for the interview was that Ted Zimmerman was in declining health and it appeared that his story might go forgotten and untold if it wasn’t documented. On the day of the interview near Tacoma, Washington Ted was in good spirits and seemed eager to have his participation in history documented.
After a few cordial preliminaries, I asked, “Is it true that on the first day a cigar box was used as a cash register?” Smiling, Ted said, “Yes, we couldn’t afford a real register for some time. In those early days a cigar box was all we had and it worked just fine, even as we opened more stores.” So the rumor I had heard about a cigar box was true.
Measuring Success
Later in the interview I asked, “In the store’s early days how did the Skaggs brothers measure results or success?” Ted’s response was simple. He said, “At the end of each day we counted the cash in the cigar box and entered the total in a ledger we used to keep track of our sales. It was cash only in those days, because there were no checks or credit cards. That meant our sales for a day was the cash we had in the cigar box at closing time.”
Ted explained more about the ledger, “We kept track of daily sales in one column and added the days of the week into a weekly total in the next column. The weekly totals then added up to a monthly total, and so forth.”
I asked, “What other measurements were used in the early stores?” He said, “It didn’t take long to learn that when an owner isn’t managing the store that labor cost can get out of hand. So we divided the weekly labor cost in dollars, by the weekly sales dollars and called it Labor Percent. It was easy to know your labor dollars, because we paid the help in cash right out of the cigar box each Friday.”
I continued, “How was Labor Percent used to manage a store?”
He explained, “We figured out Labor Percent benchmarks so we could tell within a week or so if a manager was using too much labor. As you can suspect, there wasn’t much of a problem with a manager using too little labor. Figuring Labor Percent each week gave us an easy way to look at the biggest controllable expense we had.”
Overall Gross Margin Ted described another bottom line measurement used in those early stores. He continued, “At first we kind of stumbled onto things as we opened new stores. By knowing our sales for a period of time, what it cost to purchase the products we sold, and how much inventory we had on hand, we could figure out an overall gross margin percent for the store. That made it possible for us to help a manager whose gross might be lower than other stores. If a gross was low it meant that something was wrong. It gave us something to look at and work on.”
My next question was, “How long did it take for the company to develop a Profit and Loss Statement?”
Ted wasn’t sure about the answer, but clarified, “I know it wasn’t for a while, because none of us had much accounting background. But after a while I think it was a bookkeeper that started to make them. When we got used to them, they came out every few months. Then, when the company got bigger the P&Ls came out each month.”
Measurements for Success I summarized to Ted, “So what you are telling me is that the primary measurements for success in the early days of self-service grocery were:
1. Sales Per Week, 2. Labor Percent Per Week 3. Store Gross Profit Percent After An Inventory 4. A monthly Profit and Loss Statement.
Is that correct?” Thinking for a minute he said, “That’s about it and it worked pretty good for us in those days.”
Having heard this piece of history, consider this: “What has changed in measuring bottom line results or success in the grocery industry from 1915 until today?” The answer is: the cigar box, and not much else. That’s why, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The sad truth is that almost all retail stores today function with the same four primary measurements that were used almost a century ago. With the unbelievably sophisticated POS systems, scanning, computers, and expensive software, can’t we do any better than what Ted and his colleagues did so long ago?
Consider the cost of an empty cigar box and ledger, compared to the cost of today’s highly computerized POS systems. If Ted and the Skaggs brothers could get four critical measurements out of a cigar box, how much valuable information should we get and use from a POS system that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars?
How well do you use the information supplied by your POS and accounting systems? Is your organization’s bottom line leadership and measurement strategies stuck in 1915, or have they progressed beyond the four standard measurements into more specific and motivational ways to measure results?
Pennies Lead To Profits, Dollars Lead To More Profits In an industry where dollars of sales only produce a few pennies of profit, do you honestly believe that measuring bottom line results on a weekly and monthly basis, and only in a manner that hasn’t been improved in almost a century, is adequate? I don’t think so! Give these ideas some thought and then consider how much information coming from your front-end and accounting systems are being used, and how much is going to waste. Remember, if we don’t actually use the information that comes out of the POS system, we might as well use a cigar box.
Recently I wrote a blog of a co-workers grandson who was able to make the team in tryouts for a premier soccer league. Unfortunately as he was looking forward to his first game, her grandson was given a blow. He is suffering from stress fractures in his back, requiring him to take it easy for the next 3 months…translation? No soccer. No time in the game. No team.
A blow for anyone, this was particularly crushing to this young man. He was poised to make his mark as a key member of the newly formed team. Now what would he have to offer? As we talked about his situation, we began to see this not as a detrimental blow, but an opportunity in the making.
Peter Drucker of HBR said, “Every enterprise is composed of people with different skills and knowledge doing many different kinds of work…Each member has to think through what he or she aims to accomplish-and make sure that associates know and understand that aim.” What this young man needed to see was that he was still a very important part of the team. His goals had not changed; he just was looking at it now from a different aiming point. He has the power to influence his team as a leader can, even without being able to touch the ball.
Three things a team member can do to help influence his/her team; See a change, position the change and help the team embrace the change and get the Team Work going.
See change: In this case it was not hard to see what had changed. With the injury, this team member’s role within the team was changed. He was no longer able to run the field but could lead from the sidelines. What can be hard for anyone is to view change not as a challenge but an opportunity.
Position the change: Team players need to position themselves to make opportunities out of changes in a player’s role on the team. Many times the opportunity to aid the team is in a greater leadership role as in this young man’s situation. This opportunity could not have been given him without a change (the injury) taking place.
Help other’s embrace the change: A blow to any team is the losing of its member to injury or other circumstance. For a team to succeed, its members need to embrace change and move forward with the same goal in mind. Once the change (however it presents itself) is embraced by others, it allows the team to become focused on the goal despite outside forces. In this young man’s case, change happened again as he was able to still play on the field later in the season as the injury healed.
In observation, not only did the injury change this young man’s outlook on his part within the team, but also his outlook on change itself. He was able not only to be led himself, but also lead others. After all, we all know. ..Change happens. All we can do is be better prepared mentally for it.
After five years separation, several former employees of a bankrupt company, which I was one of, decided to have a mini reunion. The main purpose of getting together was to find out how our coworkers survived their major life changes. We wanted to know if the others were happy in their new jobs or did they even have one? Unfortunately, some of us had had more than a couple positions in the five years following the company’s closure. We had worked together, more or less, for 20 years and we found that building relationships like we had was proving to be difficult to attain in our new positions.
What surprised me was the company’s failure was never discussed at this gathering. In fact, no one seemed to remember the difficulties we experienced, such as crews meeting production costs, budgets, or wage issues or even what drove the company to bankruptcy. What we remembered was the camaraderie and funny happenings. We talked about how coworkers were often more like family than their real relatives.
Like most families, we had our share of strange, fanatical, and outlandish people. I remember one year we had them all at once. Yet, in the center of the turmoil was a core group of individuals everyone else depended upon. It was guaranteed that these people would show up every day, ready to do their best, and answer any question that crossed their path.
What Makes an Organization Special
I guess what made the organization special in our memories was the fact that we were in it together. Whether the times were good, bad, hard, or easy, we stuck together, trying to do the best as possible for our clients. Oh yes, we had our idiosyncrasies that drove other team members crazy. Occasionally, one of us would complain as if we hated our jobs, throw a tantrum, or cause an uproar. But, we truly cared about each other and the business so we would over look the infringements. In the end, we were the ones who mourned the death of the company.
The Leadership Team
Looking back on it now, I realize that this feeling was due to our leadership team. They certainly weren’t the greatest or most objective of leaders. They didn’t always listen or communicate their wants and needs clearly. In fact, one supervisor often said about his team, “People are just no damn good.” Not that he really believed it; I think he just liked to say it. Their example set the tone for the organization. Leaders didn’t dictate but were team members, who worked hard to make a successful business. By the way, this leadership team wasn’t the cause of the bankruptcy, that’s another story. Gross negligence comes to mind.
The Lesson
The lesson here is leadership isn’t about perfection but about intention. It’s doing your best, continually trying to communicate with others, struggling to give your people the tools they need, and doing the right things (as much as possible). What holds loyalty from core team members is the loyalty given by the team leaders. Our leaders truly cared about their subordinates and the success both for each individual and the company. Yes, we were disappointed when some leaders let us down. However, collectively, the team stood for us and against outside forces intent on our failure. As such we stood with them to fight those forces as well. Sounds like a family, doesn’t it?
Once there was a boy who found there was a wonderful device, the telephone with a live person on the other line ready to help you. Her name was ‘Information Please’ and there seemed there was nothing she did not know. Information Please could supply anyone’s number, the correct time and as the boy soon found was a means to gather intelligence.
The little boy took every advantage of Information please. ‘I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts.’ Information please came to the rescue… ‘Can you open the icebox?’ she asked. He replied he could. ’Then chip off a little bit of ice and hold it to your finger,’ said the voice.
After that, he called ‘Information Please’ for everything. He asked for help with his geography, and she told him where Philadelphia was. She helped him with his math. She told him his pet chipmunk that he had caught in the park just the day before, would eat fruit and nuts. This little boy gathered information for any question he desired.
Where do we go to gather our intelligence? Thinking we are getting the most accurate information possible, we often use the World Wide Web as our personal Information Please. Unfortunately, the computer only answers what it has been told. The information we receive is at times not only misleading but inaccurate as well. So what do we do then?
To gather the correct information needed to make an educated and informed decision, a little strategic thinking may be involved. You might follow five ways to gather intelligence as taught by CMOE in its strategy programs:
Do your homework and research your target thoroughly (get knowledge hungry)
Investigate and understand the environment you are working in, moving into, or encountering
Decode and anticipate future trends, recognize patterns, and “connect the dots” (cause and effect links)
Seek out accurate and objective information about your capabilities and readiness level
Establish signals, harbingers, and mechanisms to track progress and alert you to opportunities and dangers
Sometimes it takes more than just clicking a key on the computer or picking up the phone to gather information. Regardless of whether we use ‘Information Please’ or the Internet to gather our intelligence to make a decision, we must make sure the information is accurate.
The helm or steering mechanism of a ship adjusts the angle of the rudder, and in turn, changes the direction of the ship. In the 18th century as technology increased ships began to increase in size. While this growth was advantageous, at the same time the ships became increasingly difficult to control. Thus a ship master needed an invention to foster technical growth but at the same time keep the ship on course. Today’s steering wheel was designed to connect to the tiller of the boat, with a block and tackle. This addition provided a considerable increase in the ship’s mechanical capabilities and resulted in smoother operations with less effort.
I relate this story of the steering wheel because the world economy is going through some stormy waters. Although the changes going on may turn out to be good in the long run, it is still difficult to stay the course in the middle of these “troubled waters”. More than ever we need strong leaders to step up and take the “helm”, provide guidance, and “steer” their teams in the right direction.
A strong leader will effectively partner with each employee and provide direction, guidance, and coaching. He or she can help team member adjust their personal courses and move into “smooth water”.
Providing constant support takes a lot of effort but it will be worth it in the long run. Consider the following points when helping your team stay afloat:
Communicating frequently with each team member
-Will reduce or eliminate fear of the unknown
-Encourages confidence in individual performance
Building understanding within your team
-Instills ownership in the tasks to ensure success
-Keeps each person focused on the goal
Encouraging respect between members
-Promotes synergy
-Supports a relaxed and engaging environment
Maintaining your integrity
-Retains trust in you and the organization high
-Inspires integrity from team members
“It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what is required.”
Recently, I was leaving a local arena with my family after attending a hockey game. Our local winter weather tears our roads apart and therefore created some necessary road work to be done that was in currently in progress. Therefore, instead of two lanes leading north out of the parking lot there was only one lane and it didn’t take very long until several cars including ours were boxed in.The car in front of us was crowded with young people eager to get going. In order to get out of the parking spot and into the traffic, a girl stepped out of the car to direct traffic. She stood in front of the next car in the exit line blocking the car. An act, we often see.
However, the act infuriated the blocked car’s driver. With a smirk on drivers face and a “me first” attitude, the driver eased the car forward almost pinning the young girl between the two cars. While people in both cars were too impatient for the situation, the driver’s action was potentially dangerous. Had the driver accidentally pressed the gas pedal instead of the brake, the girl would have been badly injured if not killed. This driver’s “me first” attitude was noticed by several other drivers. In an unspoken group effort, the errant driver was deliberately boxed in for several extra minutes while others exited.
With the all the negative news on television, radio and newsprint, many people may demonstrate this “me first” mentality. We can understand their fear, as no one wants to lose their job, income, or current standard of living. Yet, this mentality harms not only harms team members and the organization, but that person’s competence and performance as well. When their intentions are to prove their personal importance, they tend to make less desirable decisions, sabotage other’s efforts, and in the end bring their fear to fruition.
As a leader you can do many things to help avert this “me first” behavior. Consider the following as you choose your course of action
Remain positive in your speech and actions. Your team will reflect your attitude; if you are positive, team members will feel more secure.
Keep communication lines open with everyone. Don’t keep secrets. Secrets have a way of being shared and peoples trust in you can be lost.
Give constant and honest feedback. Don’t lie; people recognize a lie very quickly. Lies generate fear.
Encourage innovation and creativity. Ask them to look for processes that can streamline, boost efficiency, or increase savings. Make them a part of the solution.
Impress on individuals that through team effort the organization can survive a negative environment. There is power in numbers if corrective action is taken.
Encourage employee development through training. Training increases the feeling of security (If the organization values me enough to train me, then I am important).
If you remain optimistic, the members will respond in a like manner. Your team will not continue to perform proficiently but serve as a model of teamwork to others in the organization.
The helm or steering mechanism of a ship adjusts the angle of the rudder, in turn, changes the direction of the ship. In the 18th century as technology increased ships began to increase in size. While this growth was advantageous, at the same time the ships became increasingly difficult to control. Thus a shipmaster needed an invention to foster technical growth but at the same time keep the ship on course. Today’s steering wheel was designed to connect to the tiller of the boat, with a block and tackle. This addition provided a considerable increase in the ship’s mechanical capabilities and resulted in smoother operations with less effort.
I relate this story of the steering wheel because the national and world economy is going through some stormy waters. Although the changes going may turn out to be good in the long run, it is still difficult to stay the course in the middle of these “troubled water”. More than ever we need strong leaders to step up and take the “helm”, provide guidance, and “steer” their teams in the right direction.
A strong leader will effectively partner with each employee and provide direction, guidance, and coaching. He or she can help team member adjust their personal courses and move into “smooth water”.
Providing constant support takes a lot of effort but it will be worth it in the long run. Consider the following points when helping your team stay afloat:
Communicating frequently with each team member
- Will reduce or eliminate fear of the unknown
- Encourages confidence in individual performance
Building understanding within your team
- Instills ownership in the tasks to ensure success
- Keeps each person focused on the goal
Encouraging respect between members.
- Promotes synergy
- Supports a relaxed and engaging environment
Maintaining your integrity
- Retains trust in you and the organization high
- Inspires integrity from team members
“It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what is required.”
-Winston Churchill
Since it appears that many people in the working world are feeling numb, frightened, or indifferent toward their daily work, I propose that organizations strive harder to make a game out of work by challenging their employees to compete to win. Like the way I coach the football team, leaders can make work more fun and find ways to use metrics and scorecards to measure progress. With a little fun, leaders can create a winning 
Peter Drucker of HBR said, “Every enterprise is composed of people with different skills and knowledge doing many different kinds of work…Each member has to think through what he or she aims to accomplish-and make sure that associates know and understand that aim.” What this young man needed to see was that he was still a very important part of the team. His goals had not changed; he just was looking at it now from a different aiming point. He has the power to influence his team as a leader can, even without being able to touch the ball.
What surprised me was the company’s failure was never discussed at this gathering. In fact, no one seemed to remember the difficulties we experienced, such as crews meeting production costs, budgets, or wage issues or even what drove the company to bankruptcy. What we remembered was the camaraderie and funny happenings. We talked about how coworkers were often more like family than their real relatives.
After that, he called ‘Information Please’ for 
However, the act infuriated the blocked car’s driver. With a smirk on drivers face and a “me first” attitude, the driver eased the car forward almost pinning the young girl between the two cars. While people in both cars were too impatient for the situation, the driver’s action was potentially dangerous. Had the driver accidentally pressed the gas pedal instead of the brake, the girl would have been badly injured if not killed. This driver’s “me first” attitude was noticed by several other drivers. In an unspoken group effort, the errant driver was deliberately boxed in for several extra minutes while others exited.
