Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Eat Your Frog First
Mark Twain said that suppose tomorrow morning, the first that you do, is catch a live frog, stuff it into your mouth, munch it down and swallow it all up.
Once you did that, the day can’t get much worse now can it? Therefore every morning, find the ugliest most repulsive task that you have on your to-do list (i.e. your frog) and knock that off before getting on to doing anything else. Once you’ve got that done, the rest of the day when you’re doing the easy tasks, would seem like relishing your favorite dessert.
How many times do you ask yourself why you haven’t accomplished more during the day? Try this: write down your priorities as you leave your desk, and then you too can eat your frog first when you return n the morning. You’ll feel much better at the end of the day if you accomplish your priorities. It’s a great way to stay focused on what is really important.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
I Don’t Always Like Feedback – Do You?
I came back from a vacation in Mexico all excited about a new program I created. I shared it with my colleagues and found my self sputtering as if a bucket of cold water was poured over my head. They rained on my parade!
In case you are curious, the new service I am referring to is Tell-Me-What-to-Say-Coach, a subscription service to respond to the types of advice I am asked for almost daily. “What do I say to my employees, CEO, wife…”you name it.
But I digress….
As a recovering entrepreneur, I often suffer from relapses, and I rely on my Forum for Seasoned Coaches and my TAG advisory board to keep me in line. But…. I don’t always like what they have to say. This time I listened in earnest to their objections and realized that it was time to take their comments to heart and take a good look at their concerns.
OK – I won’t skirt the issue any longer…they felt that my service message was getting diffused and that I was offering too many services. We spent quite a while sorting through my different offerings to find the “umbrella” that unified them and made sense. Here is what I came up with (from my Welcome page):
Frumi is the leading advisor to accounting and finance professionals
Offering a portfolio of services for individuals and groups:
• Groups – board retreats , team meeting facilitation , the MORE© Program and conflict management
• Individually – coaching and tell-me-what-to-say-coach subscriptions
• Education – CPEs through group live seminars and online university courses as well as book summaries and books
The power of three wins again! And so does the power of feedback!
How do you react to feedback? All comments are welcome.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Building Relationships IS your Business
Do you believe that building relationships builds businesses? If so, then building relationships IS your business.
Most people are eager to make a sale, acquire a new contract or secure a new consulting arrangement. Whatever business you are in, the urgency of the matter is NOT going to help you get business. Now is the time, more than ever, to think about the relationship. It’s a time to meet people just to shake their hand and create and build relationships.
Who do you give your business to? Don’t you like to give business to people you have known and trust? Why would now be different? Concentrate on the following three key elements:
1. Give before you get - begin by adding value in some way that differentiates you from others
2. Listen to what people need – don’t sell them. Ask questions and find out where your contact’s interests lie.
3. See if you can partner with them to create a solution - After you have heard them and only if it’s appropriate ask if they’d like to partner with you when offering the absolute right solution. If you don’t have the solution – wait until they have a need that you can
“Slowing down to speed” up works for selling to0. Don’t rush the relationship building part.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Moving the Peanut: Make Sure the Motion is in the Right Direction
Are you reviewing everything that you are doing right now? This is the time for re-evaluating and re-purposing your business if that is what is called for. Companies that take the time to re-evaluate everything and anything will be the ones left standing and growing in future years.
Whether you call it downsizing, right-sizing or optimizing, the result is employees that are confused and uncertain about what will happen next and how it will affect them. You do have to tell the something! This is the time to be talking about the possibilities and even if you are sharing the uncertainty saying something instills more confidence than staying silent.
What is under your control? Those are the things to concentrate on right now. You may be moving the peanut forward but are you sure that you are moving in the appropriate direction. STOP! Evaluate…and if need be restructure, and revisit products and services. See how you can leverage what you have already created.
Are YOU moving the peanut in the right direction?
Saturday, February 28, 2009
You Don’t Have to Choose the Hardest Thing
A few years ago, my son Cory had to make a tough choice at USC’s Marshall School of Business. He had to choose his major field of study. As he thought through his choices he asked my advice. The advice I gave him was much different than I gave my older children prior to becoming a business advisor and coach.
As a coach, I have learned how important it is to play to your strengths. In his book, Now Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham tells the story of a player on the Chinese Olympic ping pong team. The player had a very strong forehand and was working on his backhand determined to improve that as well. His coach advised him to work much harder on his forehand instead, the theory being that if you work on your strength the opportunity for improvement is exponentially better. The result was that with his formidable forehand the player became the Olympic champion.
My advice to my son was to choose a field of study that was “easy” for him. He was rather taken aback by this advice as he thought he should do something challenging, not a subject where he could get an “A”. I asked him what the second easiest course was for him and suggested that perhaps a double major might be a good way to play to both strengths and still give him enough of a challenge.
I am very proud to say, that Cory graduated Magnum Cum Laude with a degree in both Business Administration and Accounting. Now how is that for playing to strengths?
Do you choose was is difficult or take the time to discover your own strengths?
Friday, January 23, 2009
Letting Go to Allow Things to Happen: Dead Blackberry Story
I couldn’t believe it – my BlackBerry’s track ball was stuck. What a disaster. I depend heavily on my BlackBerry for setting appointments when I’m out and about, looking at my calendar, looking for phone numbers and checking on my task list. All I could do was click to answer the phone and type in a phone number, if I knew it by heart. I had to wait 3 days for my new phone. It seemed like purgatory to me! Because of my phone insurance I couldn’t even go to a store to buy a new one.
On the morning of the third day, I was driving to an early meeting, still fiddling with the track ball hoping for a miracle, when suddenly it got stuck on a loud ring. Oh oh. Now I couldn’t shut it off at the meeting and I couldn’t move it back to a dial position for a call I had to make. Yes – the number was on a sticky note on my printed calendar – so last century. Just when I thoughi it couldn’t get worse….it did!
Fast forward to later that afternoon. I was standing in my kitchen. I took a deep breath and surrendered to the universe. I decided to just let go of my anxiety and dismiss my BlackBerry problem from my mind. Clearly stressing hadn’t yielded any results.
I picked up my blackberry to put it in my office and having done so often in the last three days, I just ran my finger over the trackball. It moved!!! It moved up, down and sideways – all was well…but not until I let go!
I am asking myself the following question: What would happen if I surrendered other anxieties – like will all my clients bolt because of the economy? Just breath….
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Leadership Begins with Self-Leadership: Purpose is the Fuel
Do you ever wonder why some people succeed more easily than others?
My theory is that the underlying fuel is passion and purpose. If you are clear about what makes you tick, what puts that fire in your belly, then work is not a four letter word.Having a purpose is like having a strategic plan. All ideas, decisions and adventures can be held up next to your purpose to see if they are in alignment.
Purpose and passion inspire and motivate others. Isn’t that the magic formula for a good leader?
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Tell People Why They Are Valued
Most people care more about being recognized and appreciated than they do about money. Very often what gets lost in the daily overwhelm is telling people what it is that you value about them. By adding this simple practice to how you manage your people you can make a tremendous difference in the results that they achieve.
Every person contributes in some way to the service or product that a company delivers. Whether it is to answer the phone and be the first point of contact for a customer, or a sales person in the field, that employee needs to understand the value they contribute. This is the best single way to create a motivated workforce.
Ask yourself if you have told someone important to you what it is that you value about them. And then go do something about it!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Perspective: Looking for the Shoe Horn
As a result of a small spill while warming up in boot camp, I found myself back at
the orthopedic surgeon looking at an X-Ray for clues. The doc looked at my plate
and screws (yes, I am a bionic woman now) which he installed in my knee after
my ski accident and declared me in great shape. But ouch - I heard something
pop and insisting that I heard something, suggested that it might have been my
lateral ligament. No. Not that. I sat there, with what my kids would call “the look”
and waited patiently while he turned back to the X-Ray. There it was a little
higher up - a small non-displaced fracture of my femoral condyle.
The lesson here is the importance of perspective and looking at things from all
angles - and of course, thinking out of the bun or out of the box, depending on
your preferences.
The following week I launched a search for a shoe horn. Wearing a splint locked
in a straight position, I had trouble getting my lovely new shoe on my left foot. I
searched high and low for a shoe horn. They apparently don’t exist anymore.
But wait - in the middle of the night I sat bolt upright. What happened to the shoe
horn that I brought home from my Dad’s last year? My Dad had a whole
collection of fancy shoe horns and insisted I take one as I moved him from his
apartment, I somehow remembered putting it on a brass nail near the bottom of
the stairs.
The next morning, I peered over the rail, and sure enough, I had walked by the
shoe horn every day even after I began my search. By looking for it from a
different angle, there it was.
To me, this is a metaphor for not seeing the obvious or what is right under your
nose all the time. How are YOU going to look at things from a different
perspective?
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Staying True to Yourself: The Frog Theory
I have an idea about why relationships fail.
Do you know how to boil a frog? I know it sounds disgusting but the metaphor just works so well for relationships that I just have to share it with you. If you drop a frog in boiling water, it’ll just jump out. However, if you put it in cold water and heat it slowly….well…it’s curtains for the frog, and of coarse they croak. (A bad pun for sure).
Relationships can die in the same way. People really want to be liked and seen in a good light. As a result, they work very hard at pleasing people and doing an admirable sales job so that the other person will think they are incredible. The problem, as I see it, is that people become who the other person wants them to be. One day they wake up and ask themselves “where did I go?” They are not even the person their spouse or significant other were attracted to. They have slowly changed into someone else and they need to escape.
Consequently, it is important to be self aware and stay REAL. That way you can avoid the fate of the frog and stay true to yourself. You are fabulous and perfect enough just the way you are.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Managing Your Vibrations: Even the Beach Boys Knew it to be Important
Do you have those good vibrations?
The idea that the power of your thoughts and the frequency of your energy vibrations create your experience is not new. While some people think that this is New Age thinking, you can find this concept in the Kabala and in the Bible (if you know where to look).
Fourteen years ago I met Joanne Rodasta Wilshin who wrote Take a Moment to Create Your Life. Joanne changed my way of thinking when she said “Thinking the right thoughts takes the work out of doing”. In fact, she transformed my life. I have been an eager student and a member of her Gaian Sisterhood ever since.
The Secret has been widely acclaimed and for many this was their introduction into the world of manifesting desires from thoughts and visualization. Do you know who else has written about this? Napoleon Hill (1927) wrote Think and Grow Rich and he was inspired by Wallace Wattles who wrote The Science of Getting Rich in 1910.
Don’t think that this is only about money though – there is a mental, physical and spiritual component to “riches”.
Are you getting the idea that there may be something to this? Is there truth to us being spiritual beings in human bodies struggling to remember what we knew before we got here?
The essence of manifesting your desires is that we all consist of energy and in order to attract what we want we must be vibrating at the right frequency as our inner source or higher power (you choose). Esther and Jerry Hicks have written numerous books on how to accomplish this by paying attention to your “Emotional Guidance System”. By being in tune with your emotions you can reach for higher levels of feeling good until you can vibrate at the frequency which will attract your desires. This is the Law of Attraction. And it works!
The key to success is to recognize that it is a practice and not a quick fix for life’s curve balls. Pay attention to your feelings and reach for better thoughts and better feelings ….and read Manifesting Your Desires by Esther and Jerry Hicks as they are the gurus on the topic. As usual, I am just here as the catalyst for change and to whet your appetite for more knowledge.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Fear:Facing the Demon Head on
Most of us face fear from time to time…if not most of the time. It can paralyze us and prevent us from reaching our goals and objectives. The worst thing about fear is that when we focus on it, we create more obstacles in our path.
Most of the time I can fight the demon myself…but every now and then I have to remind myself how to do so. In a book called Dune there is the following passage: ““Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it is gone past me I will turn to see fear’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
For months I had these words taped to my bathroom mirror where I could read it every day. Ultimately reading it every day isn’t a great solution, but it did lead to a couple of practices that minimize fear and set me on the path to freedom of fear and better yet attracting what I really want in my life.
Practice number 1: Gratitude. Every night, instead of counting sheep or something equally unattractive, I review the experiences of my day for which I am grateful. These can be anything from a terrific conversation to an incredible bowl of ice cream. The list calms me, and puts me in a good frame of mine for sleep. In fact, I usually fall asleep before I finish – way more effective than sheep counting.
Practice number 2: A rampage of appreciation. I’d like to tell you that I thought up this term myself, but I didn’t – I learned it from the work of Esther Hicks and her practices discussed in her book Ask and It Is Given. As soon as I open my eyes in the morning, I begin listing everything I appreciate. This is a little different than gratitude. For example… I usually awake to a paw on my face. One or other of my gorgeous Maine Coon cats decides that it’s time for me to get going. So my first appreciation is for the furry face that wakes me up. Next I usually appreciate my room and the green trees outside my window. As my day starts and the list evolves, my mindset is a positive one and there is no time for fear.
We each have a choice – live with fear or try new things to set it on its way!
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Moving the Peanut Forward
Why is it that some people succeed in overcoming some impossible obstacles while others get side tracked and distracted?
My theory is that in order to meet your goals and the expectations you set for yourself, you need to maintain momentum. The key is to ask yourself every day “What do I need to do today, to push that peanut forward.”
When you read my peanut theory, do you imagine an executive in a suit on their hands and knees pushing a peanut with their nose?
It doesn’t matter who you are. Everyone gets overwhelmed from time to time. Being in a state of overwhelm can lead to fear and then a feeling of helplessness and lack of control over our lives. In order to emerge from this cloud of doom, just think of one thing for today that will move you (and the peanut) ahead. After only a few days you will begin to emerge from overwhelm and be back in control.
A good friend recently called to ask for advice. She was totally paralyzed by the idea of moving out of her home of 37 years. She has an amazing view and that is certainly hard to leave behind, but 37 years of living also has a way of filling every nook and cranny and the idea of moving anywhere becomes an oppressive task. With the peanut theory in mind, my friend reported a few weeks later that she was able to move into action and sustain the momentum. Every morning as she got up to face the possible projects of the day she asked herself “What do I need to do move the peanut forward”. She was the inspiration for writing this “ism” – she insisted that I share this bit of wisdom
Monday, April 14, 2008
Everywhere You Go there You Are
Every now and then a potential client will make it clear that they want to stick to business with no conversation about their personal life. It doesn’t take very long before they realize that they are not a bifurcated personality. Our beliefs and our values are what direct our thinking, our actions, and therefore our results. You may leave your favorite jeans on the floor of your closet, but when you leave the house in your Armani suit you are still you.
It’s also very helpful to look at the other side of the looking glass for clues when we are stuck. Our business life is mirrored in our personal life, so when we are looking for answers in one area we may find it by studying the other.
One of my favorite examples is a wonderful client I worked with a few years ago. He was a very successful doctor and because he was bored he decided to get his MBA. He then got involved in a series of business misadventures and was doing a review on where he was and what he wanted to do next.
The “aha” came when I asked him how he approached dating. He would meet a lovely young lady who would pursue him. He’d be enchanted by this attention and would find himself a year later struggling to extricate himself from a failing relationship. As he was telling me this story I could see the light bulb go on in his head. He was doing the exact same thing on the business side of the looking glass! Some engaging entrepreneur would seduce him with an amazing product. He’d find himself involved and then in almost the same amount of time as his dating relationship, he’d once again be in a messy situation and wondering how to get out.
What changed radically as a result of this insight was the creation of criteria and objectives for both dimensions of his life. Think of areas in your own life that this “ism” applies to. Do you treat your employees the way you treat your children? Where does this show up for you?
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Emotional Bank Accounts and the Power of Deposits
Bank accounts are a really good metaphor for relationships. In this context a deposit is as simple as doing something thoughtful that is relevant to the other person. A withdrawal, as you might imagine is that thing you do that pushes someone’s buttons or causes them anxiety.
Did anyone ever teach you how to write a check or make a deposit as apart of your education? If so, you were one of the lucky ones. Most of us just bumble along and learn on our own. We all know how wonderful it is to make deposits – after all, deposits allow us to take care of all our needs and wants. Withdrawals are more painful and can sometimes be very much more challenging.
Bank accounts are a really good metaphor for relationships as well. In this context a deposit is as simple as doing something thoughtful that is relevant to the other person. A withdrawal, as you might imagine is that thing you do that pushes someone’s buttons or causes them anxiety.
It’s obvious that in our personal lives we frequently either please or disappoint our spouses, significant others, children, parents etc. In our business lives the same is true with partners, peers, direct reports and others. Think about creating this new way of thinking about your interactions – what might you do to make deposits with your child or your business partner? What difference would this make to how they feel when you make withdrawals by not being on time with a report or showing up late for a school play? You certainly want to have a positive balance in your emotional bank account!
What follows is an example of how I found a great way to communicate this life lesson to one of my children.
The morning after Thanksgiving I got a call from my youngest son, who may prefer to remain nameless in this story. He had left his truck at home and needed a ride home from his girlfriend’s house. His girl had already left for work and so I asked him a question that caught him somewhat off guard – I asked if he made the bed. His answer was “no” (of course not) and so I suggested that he do so before I picked him up and that I’d explain why when he got in the car.
My son is a finance and accounting major at USC and is a very smart young man, so I decided to seize this opportunity as he was captive in my car. What an opportunity to clue him in about relationships in a way that would make sense to him.
Here is what I shared:
When you stay at the fraternity house on the weekend and your girl is alone on a Saturday night, you are making a withdrawal from her emotional bank account. When you just made the bed though, it was a huge deposit. I am sure she will come home and be totally enamored with how thoughtful you are.
Your job is to look for those opportunities to make deposits. You will always make plenty of withdrawals without even knowing it.
As he nodded at me, I knew that I made my point.
What deposits do YOU need to make today?
