Retired consultant Adrian Savage says a great deal of current management practice is deeply flawed because it assumes that people can control what cannot be controlled. "You can measure, audit, analyze, rate, and chart it all you like, but you still can't control outcomes, results, global trends, or market movements," he writes on his Slow Leadership blog.

He portrays control through three prisms:

• Some things cannot be controlled, whatever you do. The most obvious is the weather. But this category also includes other people's thoughts, the results of most actions, and external events.
• Some things can potentially always be controlled, such as what you say or do, and how you respond to your moods and emotions.
• Many things that cannot be controlled directly can be influenced to a varying extent, such as public opinion, consumer behaviour, other people's actions, and the effects of your actions.

Unfortunately, the first group -- things that are uncontrollable -- is what we are usually told we must control. "That's why people get so stressed," he says.

Oddly, he adds, we tend to treat the second category -- things we can control -- as uncontrollable, excusing ourselves from responsibility in the one area where direct responsibility is possible.

Work would be more pleasant and civilized, he contends, if everyone accepted responsibility for their own speech and action, with no excuses, and no one was held accountable for results outside their control. "Excellence is shown by controlling what can be controlled and skilfully influencing those areas where influence is possible," he concludes.

LeAnn Thieman is a nurse. She is used to offering TLC -- tender loving care -- to her patients. And she believes that managers can increase retention by giving employees a hefty dose of nurses' medicine. Here are some tips:

• Smile a lot. Be kind. Visit them often -- and keep an open door policy. "No matter how busy you are, don't act rushed or distracted," she writes in Executive Excellence.
• Ask, "How can I help you?" Don't assume you know. Hold a staff meeting on the topic, conduct an anonymous survey, or ask directly in employee evaluations.
• Be prompt in answering their "call lights." When patients have a need, they "call" for assistance, and the nurse, seeing the light go on, responds. Watch for instances when your employee "calls" for help, verbally or otherwise.
• Explain procedures and changes, so employees know why they are taking place. Indeed, more generally, communicate often and clearly.
• Ease their "pain." Make an honest effort to relieve pain, be it from work or personal matters, such as giving extra time off when a relative passes away.
• Promote independence and self-sufficiency. Strengthen people. Offer the chance to learn new skills.
• Change "positions." Just as it's uncomfortable to lie in one position too long in a hospital bed, being in the same position at work too long can become uncomfortable or stifling. Suggest a change in job responsibilities.

In your next sales presentation to senior decisions-makers, begin at the end.

Too often, sales trainer Colleen Francis notes, we begin with what we assume is the logical launching-off point: A description of our company. But nobody cares about your company -- at least until they learn how you can solve their problems or challenges.

"So don't make your audience wait to find out why you're there. The best way to captivate decision makers, engage them in your presentation and win more business is to begin with your conclusion, and start upfront with a review of their issues - and how you intend to help solve them," she notes in her Engaging Ideas e-newsletter.

As for how to end: Summarize all your specific recommendations when you are completing your presentation, and prioritize them to reflect what you want your audience to remember the most.

4. The Value of Training     Top

What makes a franchise restaurant like McDonald's or Burger King succeed? Marketing? Operational wizardry?

According to a recent study by two academics, it's training.

Steve Michaels of the University of Illinois and James Combs of Florida State University studied 90 franchises and found that the more robust and lengthy the training program for the franchisee, the more likely the franchisee was to succeed. "On the other side of the same coin, he found that the franchises with the shortest franchisee training programs were the ones that typically failed," Wendy Webb reports in Training.

It's only one study, and of a select group of businesses: franchise operations. But it offers some research to back the claim that whatever your business, an investment in training pays off.

• Consultant Michael Kanazawa says if you believe that people hate change and that it is your job to change them, they will hate it. If you believe that people thrive on change and that your job is to unleash it, you will tap into a limitless source of ingenuity, energy and drive that will allow you to consistently take your big ideas into big results. (Source: ChangeThis Manifestos)
• Treat customers more like friends than prey. When making choices in your business, ask yourself, "Would a friend do that to a friend?" (Source: George Torok marketing blog)
• We hear a lot about empathy, the ability to share someone else's emotions. But in negotiations, says Northwestern University Professor Adam Galinsky, while empathy can build trust and cool emotional disputes, it can tip the balance too far in the direction of the other person's interest. Instead, he recommends "perspective taking": Considering the other person's thoughts, but not feeling you must align with his heart. (Source: Psychology Today)
• The search engine list (www.thesearchenginelist.com) provides a portal to just about any search engine, by type, you might want to use. (Source: Neat Net Tricks Premium Edition)
• Beware of the Vision Myth. Entrepreneur Clint Greenleaf says many successful entrepreneurs make up a story about how they had a brilliant vision right out of the gate, rather than tell the truth -- that the first few years were not perfectly planned. That just makes starting a business seem more daunting than it should be, and diverts entrepreneurs into spending more time on vision and mission than their primary goal -- to go out, succeed and make money. (Source: Inc.com)

6. Q&A with 8020Info:
    Summer Reading Suggestions        Top

Question: I'm looking forward to a vacation and have been awaiting your annual summer reading suggestions. What would make good use of my time?

8020Info Associate Harvey Schachter replies:

• This has been the year of Barack Obama. We have all been watching, and learning from, the way he leads. Major books on his leadership will probably be available only in future summers, but one released before his inauguration, Winning Business Lessons Of The Obama Campaign by Barry Libert and Rick Faulk, is certainly easy reading with some interesting observations based on three themes: Be cool, be social media, and be the change. It's not the best book you could read this summer, but it's the kind of leisurely enjoyable reading that many people seek in summer and it does help to make sense of the U.S. president's campaign brilliance and offer clues to the reasons for post-campaign success.
• If you want something intellectually provocative, try What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. It looks at why Google has been successful, not just focusing on the way the company is run but what its online role says about the future of other industries. It's stimulating, and exceedingly well written -- Jarvis was the guy who started Entertainment Weekly and he certainly knows how to entertain.
• In Who, Geoff Smart and Randy Street show how to solve what they consider your number one problem: Hiring. They are masters of the interview process, and detail the various steps -- and some super interview questions to ask -- in order to recruit the best people. Everyone can learn from this book, in an area where most of us could use some help to be more effective.
• Jim Collins looks at the flip side of his best sellers Good To Great and Built To Last in his latest effort, How The Mighty Fall. Essentially he returns to some of the companies he celebrated for their successes in the past and looks at why they have declined, coming up with a five-stage model of how companies slide. It's a short book, one you can read in a few hours on a lazy day at the beach or cottage.
• Lessons from sports are always useful. Try Igniting The Third Factor by Peter Jensen, the Olympic coach and Queen's School of Business lecturer, who uses his experiences coaching athletes to explain how to help individuals develop themselves for a high level of performance. Or there's Coach Wooden's Leadership Game Plan For Success, by famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden and acolyte Steve Jamison, which offers a melange of ideas on achieving personal excellence.
• Or how about lessons from history: Winston Churchill, CEO by Alan Axelrod takes readers through the former British prime minister's life, with some inspiring insights into leadership. You could also use The 100 Best Business Books Of All Time, by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten, to peruse capsule histories of important books and scout for ones that you should read.
• If you want to get away from traditional business books and revel in fictional writing about business from luminous writers like Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Flannery O'Connor and John Updike (as well as a few non-fiction contributors), Minding The Store, edited by Robert Coles and Albert LaFarge, should offer that summer respite.

In the July issue of Wired magazine, editor Chris Anderson offers some interesting comparisons between business models based on scarcity vs. those that reflect abundance (think limited hours for broadcasting vs. unlimited, cheap streaming of online videos). His point is that a "waste" of resources often leads to marketing surprises.

"Thinking like a dandelion" applies to the abundance side -- it may be true that many seeds are wasted, but no opportunity to grow goes unexplored. This is the right approach when brainstorming for new ideas.

When computing power became abundant for regular individuals 25 years ago, people found amazing new ways to use computers -- often for activities marketers had never imagined. Abundance thinking also applies to YouTube, in a day when it now costs about a nickle to stream a two-hour movie to one person. Many of the videos uploaded might be considered a "waste" (by everyone except a couple of family members, perhaps), but some are fresh new hits that no one could have anticipated. The demand was invisible.

Somehow human beings always find inventive ways to make use of spare cycles. Maybe we need to look at what we have in abundance and think like a dandelion.

8020Info helps teams develop, communicate and implement more effective marketing communications strategies. We would be pleased to discuss your needs and welcome enquiries at (613) 542-8020, or by email at watercooler@8020info.com.

""The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

   -- George Bernard Shaw