Be A Marvin

June 21st, 2011

I had just finished an exhausting day of work. Three presentations — in one day — to three different customers — all in one city. Everything had to go perfectly and, thankfully, it had. I was finally on my way home. I dropped off my rental car and, bone-tired, trudged over to catch the bus that would take me to the airport.

As I climbed up the steps of the courtesy shuttle I was met by the most amazing deep, baritone voice, “Welcome aboard your escape from everything. Sit back. Relax. And enjoy the soothing sounds of some of the best jazz you have ever heard. Let these notes carry you away to a peaceful place, a beautiful retreat, an idyllic get away. My name is Marvin but you can call me ‘Velvet’ because my voice and my ride is smooooooth.”

Needless to say, me and all the other bleary-eyed road warriors, looked at each other with an “Is he for real?” expression on our faces. “In case you hadn’t noticed Marvin… er, Velvet, this is a shuttle bus not a stretch limo.”

Oh, but Marvin was just getting started. He introduced each song on his CD. Gave interesting background information about the artists. Asked if we had any requests. Played mini trivia games with us. Got us all interacting with him and with each other.

It was amazing to watch! In less than 10 minutes he had transformed the “same old boring shuttle ride with a bunch of tired strangers” into a positive, upbeat, fun experience.

As we exited, every single passenger thanked Marvin (of course, he was already up on his feet to high-five each one of us). He thanked us all for choosing his company, wished us all well in our endeavors, and asked that, when we returned, would we please, once again, allow him to serve us.

It was the single best rental car company experience of my life!!  And, trust me, I rent a lot of cars.  And the reason for my positive customer experience: not the reservation specialist when I made the reservation, not the counter agent who got me a map of the area, not the security guard as I pulled out of the lot who made sure I had the right vehicle and a full tank of gas…nope. It was the shuttle bus driver.

Will I do business with that car rental agency in the future? You bet I will! I’ll probably even wait an extra few minutes if the delay will allow me to ride on Marvin’s bus.

There is no such thing as an unimportant job. You have the ability, with whatever you do, to make it extraordinary. Choose to be a Marvin.

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The Fourth

May 2nd, 2011

While warming up on the driving range I had already met Ed and Steve. They were in Orlando for a conference and were playing hooky on the final day to sneak in a day on the links. As we now stood on the first tee, the sun was bright and warm in the Orlando sky and it was shaping up to be a beautiful day for a round of golf.

It was Steve who first noticed him. “Oh great…get a load of this.”

We turned and saw a tall, thin teenager approaching the tee box. He shouldered a worn out golf bag, and was sporting a tattoo on his arm which nicely accessorized his four inch neon yellow mohawk. Clearly, he was to be our fourth.

“I do not need this today,” moaned an exasperated Steve.

“Why do they even let people like this on the course?!” added Ed.

Still 30 yards behind us, the kid yelled, “”Y’all go ahead and hit. Let me swing for a couple of minutes to warm up.”

“Like that’s gonna help,” muttered Ed. “This could be a very long round.”

The three of us took turns teeing off and, for our first hole, each of our drives was respectable enough. The hole was a dogleg to the right and all of our shots landed in the fairway in the neighborhood of 250 yards away. We were off to a great start and the compliments were flowing: “Good ball.”  “Nice shot.”  “That’ll play.”

Then we turned to let “our fourth” come up and drive and were shocked to see that he was still 30 yards behind us, two tee boxes away, with his ball teed up where the professionals play.

When his club hit the ball, it sounded like a cannon. Our heads whipped around as we followed the flight of the ball straight toward the trees. But rather than drop out of the sky like our shots, his ball continued to rise, completely cutting the corner and landing in the fairway at least 75 yards closer to the green than any of our shots.

While Ed and Steve pulled away in their cart, I waited to share my cart with our newest companion. He slowly loped  over to my cart and plopped his bag on the back.

“Great shot!” I said.

“Hit it a little thin,” he said. “But thanks.”

The three of us hit our approach shots on or near the green and then watched as this kid dropped a wedge to six feet from the hole. Then after about 20 minutes of watching us chip and putt, he stepped up drained his birdie putt.

The kid lipped out his eagle putt on hole 2 and tapped in for a second birdie. Needless to say Ed and Steve were now chatting it up with him…wanting to know what driver he was using, his thoughts on putters, what his best score was.

As he sat down next to me to ride over to the third tee, he grinned and said, “I hope I don’t slow them down too much.”

I laughed and said, “Me too, son. Nice birdie. Mom would have loved watching that one!”

Logan, my son, was a scratch golfer and on a number of junior PGA tours at the time. He was also the co-founder of a non-profit organization and had already literally travelled around the world building deep water wells in bush villages across Africa. He was and is truly a world changer.

But Ed and Steve almost missed getting to know what he could do.

Be aware of the preconceived notions you have of others. While none of us thinks we judge others, sadly we do it way more often than we think.

Slow down and give folks a chance before labeling them.

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Barriers Can Make You Better

March 31st, 2011

I am writing these words on March 27th. For basketball fans across the country and around the world, March Madness is in full bloom. And with the field shrinking down to Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, and Final Four, this year’s tournament has been filled with surprises.

As it happens every year, there have been a number of great games go down to final shots. There have also been plenty of great story lines filled with upsets, bracket busters, and Cinderellas. On one end of the spectrum there has been lots of second-guessing, hand-wringing, and head-hanging. On the other end standing ovations, celebrations, and jubilation.

As each college basketball season comes to a close I am always reminded of the amazing feat accomplished by the UCLA Bruins during their unprecedented 10 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships in 12 seasons from 1963 to 1975.

During that amazing run, UCLA had a number of truly great players but, arguably, the greatest was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then known as Lew Alcindor). His athleticism and ability to dunk the basketball made him stand out like a man among boys on the court.

But between his sophomore and junior years at UCLA, the NCAA Rules Committee made a rule change that outlawed the dunk shot. It was widely believed that the committee had instituted this change with the single goal of lessening Abdul-Jabbar’s dominance during games.

At first, Kareem was devastated. He perceived this as a huge barrier to his success. A giant obstacle thrown in his path. But his coach challenged his perspective and told him to look at this barrier as a way to raise his game to a higher level. As he later wrote in his autobiography, Kareem:

“At the time, Coach Wooden told me it would only make me a better player, helping me develop a softer touch around the basket. This I could use to good advantage in the pros, where I could also, once again, use the dunk shot. He was right. It didn’t hurt me. I worked twice as hard at banking my shots off the glass, on turn-around jump shots, and on my hook. [This barrier] made me a better all-around player.”

Just as the “no dunk rule” barrier caused Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to develop more of his potential by forcing him to focus on other skills and abilities so too can barriers have the same impact on our lives.

Whether the barrier you face is new technology, a new competitor, a challenging student or an economic downturn, remember barriers can truly help us to become even better than we were before.

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I Can’t See My Desk

February 9th, 2011

For over two decades I have traveled across the country because organizations have hired me to help their employees get organized.  I have trained well over 100,000 people in a seminar called “I’m Spread So Thin You Can See Through Me”.

As I ask participants to create a list of objectives they would like to cover, invariably, there is one that continually shows up…desk management.  Now, they might not call it that, but it shows up in a number of other ways like:

“My desk is a disaster area.”

“I have piles all over my office.”

“We are supposed to be going paperless, but I can’t tell.”

“I have no idea if my desk is wood or metal, because I can’t see it!”

“Colleagues put stuff in my chair because the top of my desk is too scary.”

You get the idea.

After inventorying the tops of hundreds of desks, I discovered that most of the stuff piled on our desks is up there for two reasons:

One, it’s up there to remind you to do something.

Two, you don’t know where else to put it in the meantime.

I call all this paper “homeless paper”…it just lives in the environment in your office and occasionally gets displaced to another area of your office to survive.

Here is a great, simple idea to help you gain control of the top of your desk:

  1. Build a “Homeless Shelter”. Some people call it a miscellaneous A-Z file.  There will be 26 folders or files labeled A, B, C, etc.
  2. Then make a decision on every piece of paper following what I call the 4 D’s of Paper Management (Drop It, Do It, Delegate It, Date It)

Here’s how it works. Grab a piece of paper and run it through the following decision-making grid, making sure you go in order:

Option 1: Drop It – Where might be an appropriate place to “drop” some of the paper on your desk? Trash can?, recycling bin?, a permanent file? Wait, it doesn’t have a home…you just built a homeless shelter for exactly this kind of document. What is the piece of paper called? File it alphabetically in you’re a-z files by that name. Now if the piece of paper requires action (not just Drop It somewhere, go to option 2).

Option 2: Do It – If the piece of paper can be handled in 3 minutes or less…do it… and get it off your desk. If it will take longer than 3 minutes go to option 3.

Option 3: Delegate It – If you can delegate whatever that piece of paper represents…delegate it. (Maybe you are the delegatee and not the delegator so this is not an option for you—then you move to option 4).

Option 4: Date It – If you cannot Drop It, Do It, or Delegate It, the piece of paper in your hand represents something that you need to do. So you Date It. Decide when you are going to do it and put on your calendar or to-do list. But here is the secret when you list this activity on your calendar or to-do list, also record where you filed the piece of paper so when you are reminded to do the task you will also be directed to where the information is filed.

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Focus on the Right Things

December 9th, 2010

On August 13, 2004, US Olympic athlete, Matthew Emmons won a gold medal in Rifle shooting in the 2004 Summer Olympic games in Athens and he was set to win his second gold medal of the games in another event. He had a commanding lead as the competition came to an end and was hoping to bury the field with a bull’s eye on his final shot.

He concentrated, exhaled, and squeezed the shot off…PERFECTION!  But there was something wrong…Matt hit the bull’s eye, all right, but it was on the wrong target! His focus had been on the wrong thing.  That error dropped him from standing atop the podium at the medal ceremony to eighth place and it cost him the gold medal.

While news of his mistake raced through the Olympic Village, many could not believe Emmons had done something like that. I probably would have gotten caught up in some “Emmons Joking” of my own if I had been there…but then again, I have been there…and I have missed targets of my own.

Haven’t you?

Like the time I lost my temper and blasted one of my direct reports in front of others…that is not “hitting the target” of how I want to be as a leader.  Or how about the time I was so focused on completing a project at work that I completely missed my daughter’s championship soccer game. Talk about missing the target?!  And you know what, I can’t even tell you today what I was working on that was so important back then…I have no recollection of it. But I still remember missing her game.

There are times when we can get “tunnel vision” and become so focused on a target that we lose sight of the target.

Take a moment and reflect on what is the target for today…stay focused on the right thing.

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