by Caroline Leach | May 17, 2015 | Leadership, Learning, Work/Life
If you think you can’t do something, ask “why not?”
Probe a little further and dig a little deeper before you write off a potential solution or a course of action.
Two graduation events in the last week week made me think about this.
Our Comms team celebrated the USC graduation of Jamie Zamora, a terrific intern who will join us full time on our Corporate Citizenship team led by Tina Morefield.
Jamie’s colleagues Brooke Hanson and Brynne Dunn asked our whole team to share their words of advice for Jamie. A few of the themes? Build a network, take time for yourself and enjoy the journey.
The whole world is before you, with problems to solve. And you can be part of the solution, starting with the questions you ask.
Some of these themes were echoed in the UC Berkeley commencement I attended this weekend to see my nephew Kodiak Spydell receive his degree in architecture.
And for all of the challenges in the world today, I was encouraged and inspired by this group of students now entering the work world.
Enthusiasm and idealism were tempered by the sober realities we all face — environmental concerns, increasing inequality and economic instability, to name a few.
The “a-ha” moment for me was the extent to which each person can be part of the solution.
No degree is required. Just one simple question can unlock ideas and solutions, no matter who are you.
Instead of thinking “that would never work” or “they won’t let us,” try asking “why not?” instead.
What are all of the possible solutions? What would need to happen to make one or more of them work? And how can you take the first step?
Why not try one of them? What’s the worst that could happen? And what’s the upside if something works?
This kind of thinking struck me in Marc Benioff‘s commencement address at Cal.
As a pioneer of cloud computing and the CEO of Salesforce.com, Benioff has built “the fastest growing top ten software company in the world and the largest customer relationship management company.”
Deeply troubled by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana that could have allowed discrimination against the LGBT community, he spoke out.
In doing so, he galvanized the support of fellow tech leaders and took steps in his own business to make it clear that the threat to civil rights carried consequences.
This had strong echoes of a TEDx Manhattan Beach speaker, David Hochman, whom I mentioned in my first post. He shared his life’s mantra: Why not me? Why not now?
This kind of thinking was evident in Marc Benioff’s actions.
And it came full circle in a story my dad told about his days as an engineering and business student at Berkeley in the tumultuous 60s.
A final exam in a course asked only one question — “why?”
Almost all of the students began writing furiously, filling page after page with lengthy responses.
Except for one student (no, not my dad), who aced the test with a two-word response — “why not?”
by Caroline Leach | Apr 30, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Leadership
What are our deepest human cravings?
To feel that we are important. That we have something valuable to contribute. That we matter.
Tony Schwartz summed it up well in an HBR blog post called, The Only Thing that Really Matters.
“How we’re feeling — and most especially whether or not we feel acknowledged and appreciated — influences our behavior, consumes our energy and affects our decisions all day long,” Tony wrote.
“Our core emotional need is to feel valued,” he continued. “Without a stable sense of value, we don’t know who we are and we don’t feel safe in the world.”
That reminds me of a great TED talk by Simon Sinek, called Why good leaders make you feel safe.
(And as an aside, if you want something engaging to do during your commute, get the TED app and listen to a playlist of talks on a subject of interest. Work Smarter, Before Public Speaking and How to be a Great Leader are favorites.)
Back to Simon. He talks about the importance of creating trust among people and fostering a safe environment as a way to build up people and organizations.
The result? “When we feel safe inside the organization,” Sinek says, “we will naturally combine our talents and our strengths and work tirelessly to face the dangers outside and seize the opportunities.”
He describes leadership as a choice, not a title. Looking after your colleagues makes you a leader, Sinek says.
That can sometimes mean acknowledging a hard truth. The principal of my son’s school wrote a poignant email to parents the day that people across the country heard of the horrible tragedy at Sandy Hook.
“The randomness and unfairness of this event remind us the deeply troubling fact that we can never fully protect our loved ones,” he wrote. He named our unspeakable fear. Which made it just slightly less awful, to be reminded that we can’t, in fact, control everything. Even if, as humans, we would like to. And we strive to.
What does this have to do with communicating effectively with employees? With winning their hearts and minds? With showing people that they matter?
It means listening – to hopes as well as fears. It means building trust. It means showing by your actions that people are important. That they have value. That they are needed. And that they have an opportunity to be part of an inspiring vision that is bigger than themselves.
Two people I know are really good at this.
First is Joe Bosch, DIRECTV’s CHRO and my boss. He gets the HR team together frequently, and a tradition is his presentation of a “Bosch toolbox.” For an individual who’s done something notable, Joe invites them to the front of the room and reads his personal note on the box, which is filled with fun tools.
Second is Andy Bailey, who leads employee recognition on my team, with a focus on our frontline employees. Andy’s mantra to “start every meeting with recognition” is something I’m proud to experience every day as part of our culture at DIRECTV.
When the Myers Briggs personality types came up in conversation yesterday, it reminded me how many thinkers, versus feelers, are in leadership roles (myself among them as an ENTJ). And thinking is good for many important activities – strategy, operations, analytics and metrics, to name a few.
But people have to deliver on those strategies. And they’re more fired up to take that next hill if leaders and colleagues are touching people’s hearts as well as their minds. So people know they are appreciated. That they have value. That they matter.
That you matter.
by Caroline Leach | Apr 28, 2015 | Learning, Work/Life
New Year’s Day always seems so full of promise. Remember that feeling of being on the brink of something great?
That’s the day I launched this blog. My goal was to go on a learning journey to explore the future of corporate communications. I’d post every Tuesday and Friday. Life would be perfect.
This isn’t my first blog. Three years ago I launched a blog on our company’s social collaboration platform. My goal was to drive adoption and role model what colleagues could do with social business.
What have I learned so far from blogging?
Pursue excellence, not perfection. It’s important to write great posts, but it’s also important to publish with some level of frequency. Find the right balance, whether it’s a blog post, a work project or an exercise program. Know when to take the leap. And make the “thumb slam” I wrote about in my first post.
Do your most important work in the morning. That’s the only time you can truly control. Texts aren’t stacking up; people aren’t asking for a minute of your time. This is the best time to do what’s most important to you. For me it might be a blog post or a big work project. Getting something important done first thing makes me happier and more productive for the rest of the day.
Don’t be afraid to look silly. In launching social collaboration at work a few years ago, I felt out of my element. But I realized I could learn what I needed to know. I started an internal blog to share my learning journey and ask for help from others. Earlier this year I debated whether to post “What’s Your Theme for 2015?” It seemed too soft and self-revealing. But I gave it a thumb slam. And 2,154 views and 61 comments later, I’m glad I did. Colleagues inspired others by sharing their themes for the year – from brave to intentional and from growth to transformation and more.
No one knows all the answers. Doesn’t it always seem like everyone else but you has it all figured out? Except they don’t. And the way to figure it out is by doing it. One step at a time. Have a plan, sure, but take in feedback along the way and make adjustments as you go. Pamela Druckerman summed it up well as, “everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently.”
Work and life are one in the same. No more searching for an elusive work/life “balance.” They are one in the same, and it makes life easier to approach it as one big mashup. What am I learning in one area of my life that I can apply in another? And as my HR colleague Linda Simon wisely says, “enjoy every day.”
On New Year’s Day as I was fine tuning my first post and figuring out how to point the servers with my domain name to WordPress, my husband, Kevin, made me a cake. The one that opened this post. Sweet.
And although my posts aren’t perfect and neither is my life, there’s joy in losing myself in the thinking, the writing and the learning. Sweet.
by Caroline Leach | Apr 25, 2015 | Careers, Leadership, Learning, Work/Life
#MPOWR was a perfect theme for Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day on April 23.
At DIRECTV, our headquarters campus was filled with the energy and excitement of visiting children. They got to see what their parents do each day to bring the world’s best video experience to more than 39 million customers in the United States and Latin America.
They also got to meet two amazing filmmakers, Sarah Moshman and Dana Michelle Cook. We screened their documentary, The Empowerment Project, which encourages girls, boys, women and men of all ages to dream big.
My daughter and I were introduced to the film at a National Charity League event. After the first few minutes, I couldn’t wait to bring it to colleagues in the DIRECTV Women’s Leadership Exchange and beyond.
With backgrounds in reality TV, Emmy-award-winning filmmakers Sarah and Dana wanted to show more positive images of strong women in the media.
So they launched a Kickstarter campaign, formed an all-female crew, and took a 30-day road trip across the U.S., interviewing “ordinary women doing extraordinary things.”
It didn’t take long to see that the women were far from ordinary – both behind and in front of the camera.
“Be bold and naive,” said architect Katherine Darnstadt. “You are a leader of your life,” said pilot Sandra Clifford.
“Do right by people,” said Navy Admiral Michelle Howard. “Treat people with dignity, and then that means in the last days of your life, you have no regrets. That’s a measure of success.”
“You don’t necessarily have to find passion in your work, you just have to find passion in your life,” said chef Mary Nguyen. “Just know that if that passion is your work it will become your life.”
How true. Writing is my passion. Why? It’s about thinking. It’s about making connections among sometimes seemingly disparate ideas and people. It’s about changing beliefs and behaviors. It’s about expressing thoughts and ideas in interesting, inspiring and engaging ways.
This is why I love my work in corporate communications and why I love writing this blog. They both absorb me in the amazing “flow” state that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described as “the creative moment when a person is completely involved in an activity for its own sake.” In the film, Dana described her empowered feeling during the road trip as not having worked a day of it.
So what would I do if I weren’t afraid to fail? I’d write more often and share this blog with others.
When I launched this blog on New Year’s Day, my intent was to post twice a week. And while I haven’t been as prolific as I planned, I’m happy that a goal I set on January 1 is something I’m still doing four months later.
Now it’s time to move on from “designing at the whiteboard” as yet another extraordinary woman, Tara Sophia Mohr, would say, and leap into sharing this blog with others for their input and feedback.
What would you do if you weren’t afraid to fail?
To learn m
ore about The Empowerment Project and bring it to a school, business or community group, visit the film’s website, check out the project tour video and follow @EmpowermentDocu on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Their Instagram collage opened this post.
by Caroline Leach | Apr 5, 2015 | Careers, Change, Corporate Communications, Leadership
If the purpose of the Communications function is about reputation as I wrote in a recent post, then its reason for being is change.
Changing mindsets. Changing beliefs. And ultimately changing behavior. All with the goal of developing a well-known reputation of being a great place to work, buy and invest, in a socially and environmentally responsible way.
If a communications strategy, plan or tactic isn’t ultimately about change, it’s unnecessary. Why communicate at all if you’re not working toward making your organization and your team better?
And what better season to embark on change than the spring? It’s the time of new life, new beginnings and new possibilities.
Whether you’re launching a major organizational change or you want to make positive changes in your own life, here’s what’s worked in my experience.
Start with why. “Why? How? What?” is the golden circle of action, leadership expert Simon Sinek says in one of the most-watched TED talks, “How great leaders inspire action.”
It’s modeled on his book, Start with Why. He defines “why” through a series of questions – “What’s your purpose? What’s your cause” What’s your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care?”
It reminds me the key question I learned in a “Strategy 101” course by McKinsey & Company for DIRECTV leaders. I ask it often – what problem are we solving for? It’s another way of starting with why.
It could also be framed as a vision statement. An aspirational view of what the desired future state could be.
Or as change expert Darryl Conner would ask, “what’s the burning platform that is forcing you to change?” As he aptly describes, people will change when the pain of maintaining the status quo exceeds the pain of changing to a new state.
Form a key team. Any change effort needs a key team of people to lead and champion it. At DIRECTV we form steering committees. These are the people who, in Darryl Conner’s lexicon, are the sponsors of change.
It worked well as we institutionalized a focus on the customer experience and winning loyalty for life. It began with a steering committee and an operating committee and grew to encompass leaders and employees alike. We now have one of the highest levels of customer satisfaction in the pay-TV industry.
It enabled us to create a connected enterprise with new social collaboration tools. We began with a vision of employees being able to connect, collaborate, access and share information, anywhere and any time, leading to increased engagement, productivity and innovation. Nearly 90% of eligible employees have adopted our social intranet.
And it drove new ways of working and increased pride in our company when we moved into a newly renovated headquarters campus with more natural light, open space and new amenities. Not only is it a more environmentally sustainable space, but employees also gave it high marks, after initial concerns about how their work areas would change.
Paint a compelling picture. How can the future be better than the present? What has to change in order to get there, and how? Why is staying in the present state going to be more painful and less advantageous than making a change? What benefits will various stakeholders experience?
These are all questions you must answer in one way or another as you paint a compelling picture of what the future will look like.
Involve people. Every successful change initiative I’ve worked on has involved people throughout our organization.
With the customer experience, we had a steering committee, an operating committee and a learning lab that was ultimately scaled across the organization.
With our connected enterprise, we launched an Enterprise Collaboration Council with leaders across the company. We engaged key stakeholders in a beta test, which improved the platform and created early evangelists for social business.
With our new headquarters campus, we formed teams of employees to give input into new ways of working. A few examples – the conference center, the cafeteria, the fitness center, wellness, sustainability and workplace flexibility.
We engage our employee resource groups in major change efforts, because members come from all over the company and communicate well about change.
As you’re building your communications team, look for people who have grit – those who are resilient and can figure it out as they go.
Address resistance. Resistance was a concept I resisted for a long time. It challenged me because it falls in the realm of emotion rather than logic, where I prefer to dwell.
But with my recent exposure to the work of Darryl Conner, I’ve come to accept that resistance is a normal part of change. And that the absence of resistance isn’t a good thing, but a warning sign that issues aren’t being actively addressed.
So look for resistance. Acknowledge it, validate it and use it an opportunity to explain the why behind the change.
The picture above is from the awe-inspiring Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit in Seattle, which my family visited last week. I chose this image because it reminds me of the messiness and the chaos that can be part of change, but also of its ultimate beauty.
Share wins. Change isn’t always a fun process. But done right, there will be some early wins. Make a big deal of those. Share successes with key stakeholders. We’ve done this through videos, awards and events. Use wins as a chance to bring people together and increase enthusiasm and inspiration.
Reflect and repeat. What did you learn through the change process? What worked well and what would you do differently next time? Apply that learning to your next change effort, or as you scale the current change.
Think back to some of the doom-and-gloom you may have heard early on. The naysayers. The critics. Maybe some of those voices even came from you. Did the worst outcomes come to pass? The best? More than likely, the change was a net plus.
I’ve changed colleges, careers and companies. With each change there was some fear and resistance. But there was consistently a better outcome ahead because I was willing to change.
Every time I’m launching a new change, I think about that.
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