All posts by steve@kerrzone.com

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Providing Service

Leave a comment

Canada is a wonderful and highly rated country, deservedly so.  Highly rated in standard of living, freedom , multiculturalism, health care and the list goes on.

I feel lucky and proud to be Canadian.  It does puzzle me though,  for some reason, in spite all the good things about living in Canada, culturally we have great difficulty giving service to others (not free or chairitable services but paid services.)

Stereotypically Polite

There is a strong stereotype about Canadians being polite.  This is held both by citizen of the country and many foriegners.  Canadians are known to be quick to apologize and work hard not to offend.

In spite of this polite and mainly respectful attitude, as a populous we find it difficult to perform paid services for others when it is our role and we are expected and compensated to do it.

Whether recieving a service from a store, restaurant or just a home delivery to name a few of the most common types I always feel the service provider is sending me a message, whether spoken or by body language, “I am doing you a favour buddy, so suck it up and consider yourselve lucky I am helping you at all.”

In this fabulous country, where life is good, why can’t we sincerly want to do what we are paid for with joy and pleasure.  Those we serve are not doing us a favour and mostly we are being compensated for doing it.

Today’s Rant

Today’s rant is brought to you by Canada post.  To my mail delivery person, I am not doing you a favour by using the mail.  When you ring my bell wait a minute for me to answer, I am old and it takes a few minutes to get to the door.

When I get to the door and call out to you as you are walking away, don’t ignore me.  It may take you a few minutes to turn around but for me the fake deafness results in a trip to the post office, a wait in a long line and more dissinterested service.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Relaxing

Leave a comment

“Relax” is a verb refering to behaviour that results in you becoming less, tired tense or anxious.   I wonder if you avoided stress in the first place, whether relaxation activities would be required.

Relaxing can address the symptoms but eliminating the cause of tension or anxiety resolves the root cause and seems to be a more sustainable solution.

But Wait

Another consideration is whether stress has value.  If it does, eliminating stress before it occurs could create a different problem.  Perhaps the cycle of stress and relaxation in and of themselves are needed and contribute to your personal well being.

It is a kind of a circular argument, but, I like to relax.  if I was never worried or stressed out, making me tired I would have nothing to relax about.  So I need to be stressed.

With no reason to relax, I would miss this enjoyable activity.  That might stress me out.  The cycle of stress and relaxation would still proceed but in reverse.

Is there an Answer?

Stress is an important part of your life.  Eliminating stress (supposedly addressing the root cause of your tension and anxiety) is not a solution.

Embracing stress, leveraging the motivation and emotions it drives, to drive achievement and personal satisfaction is the answer.  And of course falling back on the enjoyment of just relaxing from time to time keeps everything in balance.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Good Leaders

Leave a comment

All of us rely on leaders in some way.  Like many animal species (humans are still animals after all) we form groups and somehow either through a natural or unnatural process (e. g. voting) someone assumes or is given the role (or perhaps roles in the case of multiple leaders).

Why do we need leaders?

Vision, mission, and  strategy are invaluable in all organizational situations.   From government, home, charitable to corporate and all types of organizations in between having a single point of reference to define, coordinate or facilitate the organizational road map  is only practical.

That is to say, multiple places where the buck stops has been proven experientially throughout history to be impractical. Consensus and collaberation are worthwhile ideals but ultimately even in collaberative high performing teams, the group looks to a single point.

What defines a leaders success?

Everyone has unique requirements of a leader.  This is why self awareness is such a critical skill for leaders.  Understanding what the people want, person by person is the first step.

Knowing the needs of others and facilitating their achievement is the foundational behaviour of great leaders.  Of course, there is more to it than just helping others achieve success, but also creating an understanding of what the objectives are.

Most simply put, leaders enable the achievement of success. Those that enable success the most seamlessly and where the results are most notable, are the best.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

How you tell it

Leave a comment

When others seek information from you, sometimes there are restrictions on you relative to the questions asked.  This could be because you don’t know or confidentiality or privacy considerations exist.

Whatever the circumstances, how YOU craft the message defines the outcome.  You have the ability to guide what the listner hears.  The message creates understanding, acceptance, confusion, fear, etc.

It is within your control, to some extent, how the information is recieved.  This is based on presentation.  How you craft your presentation benefits greatly from your own awareness of the recipients wants and needs.

For Example

Consider a truck stop.  At the entrance is a rack of reading material for the diners pleasure while eating.  The rack contains automotive magazines, girlie magazines and tabloid newspapers like the Sun.

Given the truck stops core audience the presentation of reading content on the rack is targeted based on assumptions of  the typical customer interests.

This presentation bias, giving the people what they want, is an important consideration when sharing information with others when your objective is to influence outcomes.

An Exaggeration

Lets say you are part of an organization that needs to reduce expenses.  You want the organizational stakeholders to have this information.

When you share the information you may choose to engender an environment of fear so some will be encouraged to leave, thus cutting employment costs and reducing expenses, but you don’t want to say it explicitly.

This message sholud be vaque and full of uncertainty.

On the other hand you want to retain people witin the organization to the full extent possible a d encourage a collaborative effort to resolve the cost challanges together.

In this case, the information should be shared clearly and openly, most importantly encouraging open feedback and discussion (after all those are key collaborative practices).

Consider, to achieve your objective, what is most important is not always the information itself, rather how it is sent.  In tbe above examples, first you need to determine what the goal is, then craft the message accordingly.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Quality Disclaimer

Leave a comment

I have been writing and publishing about five posts a week for more than two years.  My objective is very retro.  That is, web logs or blogs were originally online diaries of a sort and that is what I do.

Today they have morphed a bit to advertising centric profit generators but that is not my intent at all.

Its all about me

A common definition of a diary is a personal reflection of events or experiences.  Typically, this is maintained over a regular period e.g., daily, weekly and so on).

For some, the recording itself, not the sharing with others, is the purpose.  Just the fact that recording takes place indicates there is some intent to share, however, it could just be for personal memories.

Does Quality Matter?

Since the beginning of my blog, I do get continuous intermittent feedback about inadequate punctuation, syntax, grammar deficiencies and by far the most common, spelling errors.

I have a number of acquaintances, colleagues and academic friends that frequently point out to me how my posts don’t conform to writing norms.

My inner voice is shouting “please find someone who cares” while outwardly I just smile and nod.  Readers with journalistic backgrounds can be the worst when it comes to pointing out an editorial deficiency.

I was at lunch with a friend today and mentioned the book I was working on using the website Wattpad.  (https://www..com/home) The advice came quick and fast, great idea but get an editor.

Crowd Sourced Editing

In this day and age, a very efficient way to get help can be crowd sourcing.  Wattpad is a great community site for authors and readers to get together.

If you choose to write, you can share your book with the community (those you grant permission to) so they can advise, edit or just read and enjoy.  Basically I can crowdsource my editing.

If your book is popular, the company (Wattpad) might offer to act as your agent/ publisher.  This is part of their business model to get publication revenues for themselves.

So apologies, loyal readers, for sloppiness.  Focus on the content and you should be fine (if you can understand it)

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Free Trade

Leave a comment

Picture a planet where the human race exchanges raw materials, products and services without restriction.  This senario puts all product and service suppliers on equal footing.

In this idealized situation wherever you were on the earth the price or cost of goods would be limited by natural attributes.  At the simplest level access is based on availability and demand.

Competition would be founded on the producers abilities without constraints of artificial controls like tarrifs, duties and other types of border controls.

And the Con’s

National identity requires differentiation.  A way for the population to say “My country is better than yours.   Managing your national identity requires  control over outsiders.

Our nations exist so we can collaberate jointly to support the overall populace through leadership (governance) and laws.  Setting boundaries is a key aspect of this.

Each countries internal economy and national culture tend to be unique in some ways.  Open borders make it more difficult to maintain this singularity.

At what Cost?

Freely exchanging goods and services around the world will probably increase access and lower costs.  This would ultimately improve world wide economic activity.

The insular approach lowers creativity and can result in stagnation.  Japan of the seventeeth and eighteenth century is a very real example of this.

The country was virtually closed to foriegn influences and as a result  national development and creativity stalled.

Ultimately the human race would probably benefit greatly by thinking outside of the box.  Blow away artificial limitations and be free.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Telling Your Story

Leave a comment

Taking on an organizational leadership role means your prime accountability is motivating a group of people to act toward achieving a common goal.

There are many behavioural approaches to achieving this goal.  Sucessful leaders adopt the approaches that work best for them.  This enables them to leverage behaviours which they are most comfortable with and probably best at practicing.

Nature and Nurture

There is a plethoria of studies on foundational leadership behaviour and analysis on how to best employ them.  Things like, communication, empathy, self awareness, confidence and so on.

The research continues on how much of the basic skill can be learned (nurture) and how much you are born with (nature).  There is no consensus yet but most research indicates there is some balance between natural abilty and learning.

Gaining Power

Typically, when appointed, the leader is granted power comensurate with their organizational level.  Their ultimate success will depend on the combination of granted power coupled with the power they earn following the appointment.

Earned power comes from the quality of exercise of leadership behaviours.  A key first step is getting to know your group and perhaps more importantly them getting to know you.

This leads to everyone becoming comfortable  on a personal level.  Beginning with this collegial approach begins the building of trust and respect which are the foundation of earned power.

Simply put, before embarking on the communication of strategy and objectives, specific plans and approaches, build a foundation that will support  ollaboration.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Twenty five or six to four

Leave a comment

In 1969, the keyboardist for the Chicago Tansit Authority (that was the bands original name) wrote a song he titled “Twenty-Five or Six to Four”. The song reached number four on the billboard pop charts in 1970.

A side note is the band changed their name from Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) to just Chicago when the corporation threatened to sue them,  the corporation has a copyright on their name.

The city of Chicago does not copyright their name so an easy solution presented itself.  But I digress, back to the story of the song which the real point of this post.

Without Meaning

Music with meaningful lyrics is great but for me the lyrics don’t have to have deep meaning for me to enjoy the song.  Which brings me to 25 or 6 to 4 which I always enjoyed and thought was a great message song, just not sure what the message was.

Listening to the radio this morning I enjoyed hearing an interview with Danny Seraphine, one of the bands horn players.  He explained the songs lyrics.

And the answer is

When explained, all is clear, although this is not something I would have guessed.  Robert Lamm was working all night on writing a new song.

At around 25 minutes or 26 minutes to 4 am in the morning  he realized the day was breaking and he was still searching for something to say.

Simply put, the song is about the experience of writing the song.  Who knew?  Rhetorical question of course as lots of people probably knew, I just was not one of the.

Even with this revelation though, still a fabulous song.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Sincerity

Leave a comment

Trust, at its core, is about how well we perceive  others of
of being free from pretense, deceit, or hypocrisy.  That is, are they sincere?

Our perception is filtered by a persons behaviours.  In short, what they say and do.  Sometimes knowledge we have about a situation can be used as a metric to determine someones trustworthyness.

Most often though our perception of sincerity is underpinned by feelings.  From a personal perspective there is great value in gaining the trust of others.

Earning Trust

Practicing behaviour that demonstrates sincerity should be simple.  It starts with the messages you send, whether these are based on  verbal or  non verbal communication, those must be 100% consistent.

Your honesty must be absolute.  One damaging action, leading others to question your sincerity, can take years to reverse.  The perceptions of others about you typically are developed quickly and changed slowly.

Sharing Everything

It may be an animal instinct originating from the birth of human kind; people sense when others are holding back.  A reticence to share everthing you know can impact the perception of your sincerity.

Most of us will all encounter knowledge from time to time which is not ours to share or can have negative results if we do (e.g., things bound by privacy laws or deemed to come under national security).

The key to handling these things is to be open about there existance and explaining why you can’t share them, in some cases it may be you have awareness but don’t know the answers.

Being open in this way can have a very powerfull effect.  Rather then letting others suspect you are holding back, you prove your sincerity with open disclosure to the extent possible, explaining what you cannot share and why (obviously not explicitly).

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Context Counts

Leave a comment

The answer to the question, “Is this a successful outcome?” can be dependent on your perspective.  Although the result can be agreed to objectively, that is everyone accepts what happened, whether it was positive (sucessful) or negative is very much contextual.

For Example

The owners of the majority of shares in a large company develop a plan of subsidary asset sales and excess cash divestiture through stock repurchase and dividend payouts.

The result is beneficial to exisitng shareholders of the parent company.  The value of the subsidiary drops but the holders of equity in the parent company gain (dividends, parent company stock price increases).

Ultimately the subsidiary may go bankrupt having a very negative impact on its employees, suppliers and customer base ( they need to go elsewhere if they can even find an alternative)

In this case, the shareholders deem the result a success, the other shareholders not so much.  The outcome, bankruptcy of a viable enterprise, is not disputed, whether it was a good or bad outcome is.

In case you did not recognize it, this  story is one way of describing the recent Sears Canada bankrupty.  My telling of the tale is from a cynical perspective, but does have some validity nether the less.

That is the facts, allbeit interpreted liberally, are provable facts.  So clearly your place in the story, rich owner profiting from others loss or poor employyee without severance really speaks to how the outcome is viewed.