A Race Against Time

Honda has taken a page from my book with a “Dream the Impossible” video series. The videos focus on setting big goals with impossible deadlines.

There are a handful of examples featured in these great videos, including what Honda engineers did when given the job of coming up with a hybrid car that ran on a fuel cell. They were given less than a year to do this, and used the time pressure as a friend vs. an enemy.

Another vignette features two thirty-something, rock stars of talent, film screen writers who were thrilled to get the job of the recent Star Trek remake. Upon taking the job, they received a poster in the mail to be widely distributed in movie theaters... “Star Trek, Fall 2009” (just a few months later). Instead of complaining to the Hollywood producers, they consciously used the incredible time pressure to fuel their creativity and effectiveness.

There are other interesting examples too of setting high goals and racing against time, including a race car team that had to be brought together in a hurry to win a big race, and a champion skate boarder who had to come up with a new trick, the 900, in the breath of time. The series is definitely worth checking out.

Good day! The cold winter months have fueled our creativity at Masterful Coaching. We analyzed all of our coaching clients and figured out that something like 60% of our coaching engagements involved helping a new executive in their first 100 hundred days on the job.

This prompted certain undertakings by us at Masterful Coaching. First, last summer, I began working on a book Your First 100 Days, which will eventually be published by our new company Masterful Coaching Press—incorporated last July.

Second we began building a “My First 100 Days” micro-site for leaders who are looking for: 1) ideas, 2) coaching, and 3) online courses on this topic. This site is now up and running.

The difference between a regular website like MasterfulCoaching.com and a micro-site like MyFirst100Days.net is the difference between a department store and a specialty boutique.

At this site, we will focus on the issues and opportunities new executives face in their job. For example: 1) successful executive onboarding; 2) setting the stage for realizing an Impossible Future; or 3) turning what could be a so-so job into a truly transformational assignment.

By the way, you can download the introduction to the book Your First 100 Days, by going to MyFirst100Days.net and registering.

About a year ago, Masterful Coaching, in cooperation with Defense Acquisition University (DAU), began a 9-month executive coaching certification program with ten people, including university Deans and highly-accomplished faculty members who have military backgrounds.

The idea for the program originally came from John Young, Undersecretary of Defense for AT&L, who at the time was in charge of a budget of close to $300 billion dollars. Mr. Young saw Masterful Coaching’s involvement as a way to significantly improve the performance of the Pentagon PEO’s and program managers. “Get Defense Acquisition programs delivered on time and on schedule” was the mandate.

Mr. Anderson, President of DAU, a former flag officer in the Air Force, made the Executive Coaching Certification Program a top priority, seeing it as a way to establish a coaching culture at the Pentagon. He not only engaged me in an executive coaching relationship, but saw to it that both Deans and top faculty members were enrolled as Masterful Coaching Certification candidates and ready to participate 100%.

The requirements were rigorous, starting with each of the 10 candidates enrolling two high-level Pentagon program managers, many of whom were former Generals, Admirals, as well as SES’s or Senior Executive Officers. It also involved each executive coaching certification candidate agreeing to spend up to 400 hours on their coaching commitments over the next year.

Each coach and coachee then joined together in going for an Impossible Future that represented playing a bigger game, as well as the need to bring about transformational change in their area. The commitments usually involved dramatically improving the performance (cost and schedule) of key Pentagon programs, like the Joint Strike Fighter.

We met for four days in a classroom setting at DAU, in Fort Belvoir in Virginia, simulating a flight school atmosphere based on study and practice. The participants would study one of the12 Masterful Coaching Catalytic Conversations and then practice it with their clients in real situations, in real time, with real goals.

They were supervised in this process by their flight school instructor, either myself or Master Level Coach, Carl Kaestner, through a series of coaching calls. We would start these coaching calls with comments like: “Tell me about your coachee’s Impossible Future,” or ask something like, “How are you going to make the 360 process a transformational experience?”

One of the interesting aspects of this group is that all the executive coaching candidates had leadership backgrounds, and well-developed coaching and counseling skills to begin with. Yet as many of the participants told me, “I love the Masterful Coaching Method, because it gave me a flight plan and allowed me to take my coaching skills to a whole new dynamic level.”

Said one Dean, “What’s different about the Masterful Coaching approach than most coaching programs is that it provides a methodology to instill a higher vision, while impacting urgent and important bottom-line results. Shifts in thinking and attitude are brought in through the back door.”

I was thrilled when after about 6 to 7 months into the program, one of the Deans told me that the program had been transformational particularly around realizing that you don’t have to be at the top to be a change insurgent. You can mount a change insurgency from wherever you are.

Said another participant, “I used to work in the Pentagon, and though I had a fairly high level job, the way I was thinking about things made me feel fairly disempowered. I also was like the gold fish in the water of the Pentagon bureaucracy, that couldn’t see the water. Now as a Masterful Coach, working with a top PEO, I am able to stand outside the system, yet at the same time impact it. I feel like I am finally empowered to make the difference I have always wanted to make.”

To find out more about the Masterful Coaching certification for your Corporate University, HR group, or internal consultants, contact Susan Youngquist at Susan.Youngquist@rhargrove.com.

Unlike the Rest of the World Which is Geared Toward Delivering a Basic Service to the Public

There it was…Eeeyewww! In the process of brushing my teeth and rinsing out the foamy white toothpaste, I noticed the dreaded blood-red streaks indicating a gum condition. It was then that I decided to do what in dentistry is called a Deep Cleaning, the usual cure for this condition.

I first checked with my local dentist and was told that the procedure would cost $1775. Wow!!! To clean my teeth and gums! I decided on the spot to check with the dentist in China, which I would be visiting shortly thereafter.

Once in Shanghai, a family member with pull took me to a local dental hospital which was a real symphony in cultural differences. There were throngs of people everywhere lining up in front of a window that looked like the ticket booth of a movie theater. There people were getting appointments for that day (not weeks from now), as well as paying bills for the procedure to be done. Instead of having to fill out the usual 5 pages of forms, I was simply told to come back at 11:45 for the deep cleaning.

In the West, dentists usually go through the three step process: cleaning, x-rays, and a quick exam with a pointy metal stick which culminates in “displaying the case” or THE LECTURE. You are going to have to spend $5000 to $10,000 for root canals, crowns, periodontal work, or lose your teeth! This is in large part a scare tactic designed for the dentist to extract as much money from you as possible.

When 11:45 rolled around, I showed up at the hygienist’s cubicle. She was obviously very professional. She asked me to sit down and began the procedure with the latest high-tech equipment, a combination of pressurized water and ultra sound. About an hour later she was done and my gums have not shed a drop of blood since.

Amazingly, the total cost of this procedure was $40 USD. Even if you take labor cost and currency differences of the Chinese RMB to the dollar into account (1 USD = 6.67 RMB) and multiply the cost of $40 by 6.67RMB, it comes out to only $266. The Chinese save people money in other ways as well. For example, no private offices, no secretaries, no answering services, and no insurers to pay.

The experience of going to the Chinese dental hospital made it vividly clear why USA healthcare costs are so out of whack. They are set up for doctors, dentists, and hospitals to make huge profits, rather than to simply make sure that the general public receives the necessary dental and medical services they need.

If you think my experience was based on limited data points, consider the fact that Juris Ozols, a friend of mine, was told by his local dentist in New Hampshire that he would need a root canal and crowns for a cost of about $1500. He decided to fly home to his native Latvia where there is a government run healthcare program.

“The USA healthcare system is largely based on BS-ing, and lies,” he told me. The reason for such a strong statement? An examination by a top specialist in Latvia revealed that Juris didn’t need a root canal and crown at all. All that was required was to close a crack in a back tooth by filling with some ceramic material. The total cost to Juris was $200.

Had a great meeting with Thee Woon Goh from Singapore the other day. Thee Woon took the Masterful Coaching Certification program with me last spring. And we have since struck up a robust relationship which I will share more about in ensuing blogs.

Thee Woon shared a great quote with me that represented several golden nuggets. It involved John Doerr, one of the great venture capitalists of Silicon Valley, suggesting to Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, to hire a coach.

John Doerr is known to be a legendary moneyman with a Midas touch. Every time he invests in a company, it seems to turn to gold. That he puts so much stock in coaching really caught my attention. Could this be one of the reasons for his Midas touch?

When Eric Schmidt was asked what the best advice he ever got during his tenure at Google was, he replied that it came from John Doerr in 2001 who said, “My advice to you is to hire a coach.”

Doerr told Schmidt that the coach he should have was Bill Campbell. Schmidt tells how he initially resented the advice… “After all,” he said, “I was a CEO. I was pretty experienced. Why would I need a coach? Am I doing something wrong? My argument was, how could a coach advise me if I’m the best person in the world at this?”

Schmidt went on to discover that that was not what a coach does. “The coach doesn’t have to play the sport as well as you do. They have to watch you and get you to be your best. In the business context, a coach is not a repetitious coach. A coach is somebody who looks at something with another set of eyes, describes it to you in [his] words, and discusses how to approach the problem.”

Thanks Thee Woon!

The furor in America around President Obama winning the Nobel Prize was really maddening and saddening. Instead of cheering for our leaders to elicit their greatness, many American’s tend to foolishly diminish them. Rush Limbaugh said when President Obama got elected, “I hope he fails.”

My view is that right or wrong, he is the President and that those who do the tearing down seldom do the building up. How does Limbaugh justify his $200 million a year contract as a professional provocateur? It seems less a statement of Mr. Limbaugh’s good judgment and more a statement that many Americans seem to feel the need for someone to package their hatred and evoke the negative ions already swirling in their brains and blood.

It’s very hard to understand how conservative talk show hosts, like Laura Ingram, not only decry the President winning the Nobel on the one hand, but also cheer when the city of Chicago fails in its bid to hold the Olympics on the other. Am I missing something here?

I wasn’t an early fan of President Obama, but with time, I have become one, especially with his Smart Power foreign policy initiatives. How wonderful it was to hear the President addressing the graduating class of the Naval Academy saying that when you land on a foreign shore, you are not only there to express American military power, but to embody the values in our constitution – liberty, equality and enduring hope.

More…

• How inspiring it was to hear the President addressing the Muslim world from Cairo saying we respect you and your contribution to civilization vs. rail on about seeing the Muslim world as the womb of the evils of terrorism.

• How intriguing it was to see Obama extending an “outstretched hand to the Iranians” vs. the “closed fist” that was extended in the Bush administration.

• How fascinating it was to see Obama shake hands with one of our greatest detractors in South American, Hugo Chavez.

These small events may be more symbolic than substantive, but they do represent a shift in the wind in the way America sees its leadership role in the world, from big-stick unilateralism to speaking more softly and winning the hearts and minds of those who we previously spoke to as enemies, and who in turn often acted as such.

Brands are what set people, organizations, and nations apart. Brands sell!!! People like to buy brands they know and trust as opposed to the generic variety. Think Coca Cola, Honda, iPod.

Even though we don’t normally think of it that way, the most successful people on earth are successful because they have become a brand in their own right. Think Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Calvin Klein, Oprah.

It pays to consciously and intentionally create what Tom Peter’s calls a Brand Called You. Here are three tips:

1)  Stand out from the crowd. Brands differentiate one person (product from the next). Vive la difference! Think about the people in your profession or occupation. What is it about you that is dramatically different? For example, you are Super Smart, Very Entrepreneurial, High Energy, Trustworthy and Reliable, A Creative Force.

2)  Share of voice. One of the things that make a personal brand great is when people talk about the person. This is called share of voice. Think Obama, Paris Hilton, Oprah. What can you do that will get people talking about you?

3)  Trustworthiness. David Letterman having sex with his staff. Lehman brothers crashing due to the greed of its execs. GM going bankrupt. Businessweek recently reported in an issue on the 100 top brands that trust has become the dominant factor in a brand’s fortunes rising or falling. What mistakes have you made that could erode trust and how can you correct them?

There are millions of highly talented people in the world, but most don’t know how to develop a brand called me and effectively market themselves. If you don’t know how to brand yourself, create the right connections, and build relationships, no one is going to notice you, no matter how talented you are. The following story, which I read in the Washington Post, illustrates this in an amusing way.

Washinton, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later: The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes: A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes: The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour: He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate Bach pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

You may be a Joshua Bell singing in the subway. You may want to ask yourself: How am I going to brand my talent? How am I going to market it? How am I going to get people’s attention?

October will mark the celebration of China’s National Holidays, a seasonal event where people take trains home from big cities like Shanghai and Beijing to visit their families in the countryside. I think China could really be a whole chapter in one of Ripley’s Believe it Or Not books.

● Believe it or not: The People’s Republic of China (1948-2009) is just 60 years old.

● Believe it or not: China’s economic miracle (4th largest economy in the world) started just 30 years ago when Deng declared, “It’s good to get rich.”

● Believe it or not: China’s economy has been growing at over 10% a year for 30 years.

● Believe it or not: In the last 30 years, China has brought over 300 million people out of poverty.

● Believe it or not: The per capita yearly income has quadrupled in the last decade and a half.

● Believe it or not: The USA economy, in the middle of a financial crisis, is being floated by China’s ownership of over 2 ½ trillion in government bonds.

● Believe it or not: Much of the developing world looks to China, not the USA, as its role model -- there are a million Chinese professionals in Africa alone.

● Believe it or not: McDonalds and KFC make more profits in China than in the USA.

Congratulations to China for a truly historic achievement. National Holidays is really a cause for celebration!

As you drive down Shanghai’s Nanjing Road, you can’t help but notice what a high-tech, modern nation China has become. To the naked eye, China looks as successful, well-managed and orderly as countries like the USA, France, or Belgium.

Pudong Airport makes JFK look like a flashback from the 50’s. There are skyscrapers shooting up everywhere, expats from global 1000 companies in every Starbucks and Chinese fast-food joint, and traffic wardens on every street corner.

Yet, there is one pivotal difference. China has emerged as one of the 21st century’s leading nations, not through the often dysfunctional two-party democracy we have in the United States, but through a pragmatic, one-party system where leaders actually have the power to make decisions and implement innovative solutions to complex problems.

Most Westerners might come to China with preconceptions about one-party rule, but if you're like me, driving through Shanghai and seeing signs of burgeoning prosperity everywhere, you have to admit to yourself that the leaders of the Communist Party have done a great job.

If you take the American example, it reveals that democracy worked brilliantly in the context of building a new country from scratch, one that is endowed with great open spaces, fertile land and rich resources. But, what if you are rebuilding an old country, mired in endless poverty, complex problems, and scant resources picked over for hundreds, if not thousands of years?

In such a case, it is obvious that you need strong leadership based on the notion that someone has to make the decision. It’s hard to believe that China could have transformed itself after a century of humiliation at the hands of the West from a backward-looking, medieval country to a modern, economic miracle in so short a time with the kind of two-party dysfunctional democracy we have in the United States.

Can you imagine how conservative Republican senators might have trashed Mao’s Bare Foot Doctor program – an attempt to bring healthcare to the countryside – as wrecking the existing healthcare program, or how talk show hosts, like Rush Limbaugh, would have attacked Deng Xiaoping’s economic recovery program to bring 300 million people out of poverty at lightning speed? What would these pariahs have offered in its place?

Is the rosy picture of China and “The Chinese Century,” as reported in the Western press, too good to be true? In fact, the answer to that question is “yes.” For all its new found success, China is still in many ways a poor country. Executives walk the smooth pavement at Nanjing road, but a few streets over one can still see broken sidewalks with coolies carrying buckets on either end of a stick and be exposed to foul smells.

Yet, despite all this, there is no escaping the fact that the entire country is moving speedily to a new future.