I was listening to a fascinating conversation on a podcast with the founder of Toms Shoes, Blake Mycoskie who was sharing his career story including the incredible story of where the idea of Toms Shoes came from, the powerful notion of giving away a free pair of shoes to those who badly needed shoes for every pair they sold and how this idea caught on and quickly led to a legendary success.
At the close of the chat he was asked to give some advice to the listener and he shared a phrase that he lives by “Carpe Diem”, or seize the day.
His basic philosophy is that life is precious, we have no idea how long it will last so make the most of each and every day.
A little habit he uses to remind people of this advice is to sign off all of his emails with the phrase “Carpe Diem” instead of other meaningless salutations such as yours sincerely, kind regards or even my more casual one “cheers” – I do hate formality!
The cynic might think what is that fella all about but this is really clever as it is using a frequent method of everyday communication to replace something meaningless with something meaningful and possibly trigger a positive thought or emotion for the reader.
I was chatting with the fantastic Paul Born of the Tamarack Institute in Canada on my Win Happy podcast and he does something similar but uses equally powerful words “Much joy” – why not spread joy and remind people of joy each and every single day?
Taking all of this onboard I’ve started to sign off all of my emails with the words “Win Happy” which is my core philosophy – I want people to succeed, whatever success looks like for them but to go about this in a way that makes them and those round them happy. If we all lived by that approach I think life would be better and more positive, in particular our working lives.
And taking this one step further maybe even (when appropriate of course) sign off your social media posts with a hashtag with your “words” – if that’s what you believe let people know.
My challenge for you is to think about replacing your meaningless closing salutation and replacing it with something meaningful.
It might get a few strange reactions to begin with but at least it will give people something to remember you by, something to think about and maybe, just maybe, create a shift in their day.
As we start into a second full working week of the new year amidst a severe lockdown and an even more severe pandemic with outrageous Covid case numbers it looks like we need to remain on the Zoom for a while longer!
While we barely knew anything about this incredibly powerful communication tool this time last year and most likely had never used it, it’s amazing how quickly it has become a way of life.
Before this year I hated any visual meetings online, and part of that was the clunky software (I’m amazed how Skype never became more intuitive) and the unreliable performance.
I’m not sure if it was lucky timing, but when Covid sent us home in March it seemed to be Zoom or Microsoft Teams in pole position, and very quickly Zoom took a lead and became the standard, the easy one to use and before we knew it, the one most of us were using.
Even now, when I get an invite to a meeting or a webinar I find myself groaning when it is something other than Zoom, because now in this impatient age of ours we want to go click click click and we are in, 100% at ease and knowing what we are doing.
And since March, Zoom have been clever and we have seen better security and new features – I am now using it for meetings, and in Fuzion we have used it for events, training, webinars and workshops, complete with breakout rooms (another great feature), Q&A sessions and polls.
For training purposes alone it has been transformational – we quickly adapted and with a few little tricks of the trade (and humour) you can have a really engaging session with all participants.
I have also been using it for recording my podcasts and as long as the broadband is ok, it has been fantastic!
Making it work for you
Deirdre, the founder of Fuzion wrote a really excellent blog post early on last year about online meeting etiquette, and it gives some great tips about how you present yourself online and since then I wanted to add a few more tips as we get into even more of the subtleties.
Your Name
When you join the online meeting make sure that your name is right (proper spelling, use capital first letter for first name and surname- even if you are using someone else’s account you can rename yourself on entry) and maybe even consider adding your company name.
If it is a meeting with people from a number of different organisations or departments then make it easy for the others.
Who is in the Spotlight?
When the numbers of participants are high during a meeting then “spotlight” the speaker/speakers as it makes it much easier to see who the speakers are and it makes the session more interesting – even when they are screen sharing you can see just them as they present, instead of everyone.
This is a great feature in Zoom.
Meeting Room message!
As part of the improved Zoom security measures most people will end up in a “meeting room” before being left into the session – there is a facility in your settings to customise the message people will see while waiting in your room. Why not customise and add a little humour!
Where are you on the screen?
My own team just throw their eyes up to heaven (or wherever they like to go!) when I start to ask them where I am on their screen, as part of a silly game we play to break the lockdown monotony. On a serious note I do believe that where you are on the screen can be important.
If you are on the top row (having followed all of the other tips about looking good etc) you are probably better off than being on the bottom row when it comes to being noticed and gaining attention.
The first on the Zoom call occupy that space, and as long as you don’t turn off your video during the session for some reason you will stay in pole position!
For all of the tips and tricks that we have spoken about, and for all of the Zoom learning that we should have on board at this stage I am still amazed how many presenters are still not set up properly and we end up looking up their nose for the duration of their presentation.
..make sure that’s not you!
If you do land on the Zoom make sure you make a great impression!
I had one of those rare, precious things in these very strange COVID19 times – an appointment at the hairdressers!
We are good friends with one of the owners so Dee made an appointment for me and being honest I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it.
I was sitting in the waiting area observing all of the safety procedure signage as the team looked after their clients, all carefully spread out in the salon and all with their face visors or masks on.
Since March, we were all forced to jump off our frantic never ending cycle of life and while we have been busy and have continued to work hard it’s been quite different.
There’s been no face to face meetings, there’s been no travelling and there’s been no wearing of blazers and constant work shirt ironing.
As we all know, simple things like haircuts have been impossible, so at this stage my hair has been longer and bigger (I’m a curly head!!) than it’s been since I was in secondary school. It’s been a bit of a joke with everyone how big it is and I must admit that there is something about it that’s been enjoyable as the circumstances have forced me to go back in time.
While this time has been so unusual, complete with so much worry, sadness and uncertainty it has forced a very different way of living on us and as the restrictions are lifting gradually step by step it starts to close a door on the enforced life and prise open a door to some return to normal, whatever that looks like.
In ways I feel many of the changes were great changes and it would be so good to hold onto the better parts as we move forward.
In my head my impending haircut was taking on some ridiculous and much bigger significance – it was closing the door to that strange time.
After a few moments they were ready for me and as part of their very careful process I had to put on a mask – this is the first time I’ve done this and I couldn’t believe how awful it felt having this covering over my face and nose. I totally get why it’s necessary in these close quarters where everyone must be extremely careful as we emerge from lockdown, but it really felt stifling. They were saying how awful the masks were for sustained periods while working – god love our medical professionals!
“So, what will we do with your hair?” was the question by Kelly.
In my head I just wanted to leave and postpone the haircut so I explained to her that there was something about the long hair that I had enjoyed.
After a chat with Darren they reckoned long was actually quite good, so a little “tidy up” was the order of the day and the big mop of hair will love on for another while at least.
I’m not quite ready to return to normal, at least not until I’ve figured out what I want that to look like.
From my experience most LinkedIn users are not using the very useful ‘Groups‘ facility on the platform.
For your industry or your business community there is more than likely a group set up with like minded individuals who have already joined.
These could provide you with the opportunity to interact with like minded people, discuss topical issues, solve problems, demonstrate your expertise, get information or these could easily help you to identify useful connections for your business or organisation.
If you do a search right now…Dublin Chamber, Cork Chamber. UCD Alumni, Marketing professionals, Hospitality professionals in Ireland – you are likely to find a group that matches your search.
Groups will have a filter process for members depending on how they have been created – you will need to request to join or be invited to join by an existing member and an administrator somewhere will decide whether to let you in or not.
If it is a group for a membership organisation it is very likely that they will not grant you access unless you are a member.
When you create a group you have a number of options including:
Name and description
Industry types (up to 3)
Stated rules for the group (how members should use and behave within the group)
Whether the group is visible or not: you could for example make it a “closed” group for your organisation so it won’t appear on searches
If you allow existing members to invite others to join
Approval setting for posts within the group.
New Feature: Messaging
The functionality is always changing so how you can use them is always changing. For example LinkedIn have just now given members within groups the ability to send a message to other members, without being connected to them (and without having the paid version of the platform).
These messages will come into you just like a normal message on LinkedIn.
So…look for a group today that could work for you and your business, click that ‘Join’ button and off you go!
Or…maybe you could be the one to create that group?
Where I live we are really lucky to have a talented, determined and really successful Tidy Towns organisation which means we get to enjoy a beautiful, well maintained place that people take huge pride in.
As part of the keep our town tidy the Tidy Towns folk seem to have made an agreement with the political hierarchy that it would be a poster free zone for the General Elections.
You can totally buy into this arrangement in particular when you see other locations that are totally destroyed with a proliferation of posters, inevitably dominated by those candidates and political parties with the biggest budgets!
While many agree with the arrangement in our town, which without a doubt does help to keep the place tidy, I think it’s wrong.
I believe the election candidates should be entitled to allow the electorate to familiarise themselves with them and more importantly it hands a huge advantage to established, well known candidates who people are already familiar with and the very opposite to any less well known new faces.
Maybe a sensible quota of posters that each candidate is allowed in each location, relative to the size of that area is a better way to go with a strict regime about removing them post election.
Clearly posters aren’t the only way a candidate has to communicate to us, and they do have the options of literature through the letter box, social media, and the very best way of all to connect is by knocking on the door and chatting face to face.
While there is a tight election window, do we really want to hand anyone an unfair advantage, in particular to those who have been around the block already?
He is on Twitter consistently pumping out his messages, over and over garnering our attention and fuelling the stories that the media grab onto.
His content is on message: Make America Great Again #MAGA, Witch hunt, Fake News, Crooked Hillary, Build a Wall, Jobs, the Economy, I’m Great and those before me were rubbish!!
As much as we might hate him, his (lack of) beliefs, policies and philosophy we do get to see who he is and yes, we do make up our minds about him.
He has a target audience that he seems to understand quite well and sadly, he knows what they want to hear and he fires them up relentlessly in his favour with his often dangerous rhetoric.
This social media stuff is powerful and you and your business can use it too:
In the earlier part of my career as an accountant I used to hear people talk about “Being Political” and naively I never quite got what it meant.
Did it mean being sneaky, being dishonest, playing silly buggers instead of just doing your job?
I never quite got it, and I did think that, if it did exist it was something that happened in large organisations or literally in politics, where it sadly seemed to be a necessary part of that game.
As far as I was concerned. as long as I worked hard I would get ahead and there was no reason for me to believe that I needed to act otherwise.
I worked hard in a busy accountancy and management consultants office and progressed well. I worked hard in an American subsidiary of a multinational and progressed well. I worked hard in a subsidiary of Guinness and progressed well and I found myself promoted to the role of General Manager at the age of 28.
I could see “politics” happening externally around me but it was still a case of, work hard and you will always progress.
I then took up a role with the fantastic Guinness company in Dublin and six months later I discovered that my ‘hard work’ previously effective instrument was no longer sufficient to progress – I had to learn how to play politics to get on!
I never quite cracked this skill and while I had a fantastic time working at St.James Gate I can quite honestly admit that I never fulfilled my potential, even though I did learn a lot and make some contribution to the business.
I guess I was never the type that was suited to playing games and I guess this is why I was always suited to entrepreneurship, where you make your own bed and lie in it.
What does “being political” actually mean?
Being apolitical refers to situations in which people take an unbiased position in regard to a political matter.
I guess if you are being political it means you give up on your own views and principles, you take positions on things that are not yours to stay in some sort of favour with others, for some other benefit (a promotion, a raise maybe?).
Once this creeps in, as I saw in Guinness you never get to see all of the potential of the people there. Many will leave frustrated and those that stay will be the ones who are good at surviving in that environment. A lot of positive energy gets suppressed and the business never performs at the level that was possible.
At a certain point it is accepted that “this is the norm” and something bad creeps in forever.
Republican Senator Jeff Flake
I watched the speech last week given by Senator Jeff Flake of the Republican Party in the United States whereby he was declaring that he was ‘turning his back‘ on politics and not running again.
He used the words “the new normal” and how we must not let what is happening now become ‘the new normal‘.
If you listen to the content of his speech it is very interesting and quite sad with some very basic points, which illuminate how bad things have become when you ‘play politics‘ at the very highest level with the dangerous potential of affecting the whole world.
“There are times when you must risk your career in favour of your principles” – the opposite is a scary place to be. Who are we if we don’t follow principles – do you want that person working with you?
“We are all complicit when we don’t stand up when we know wrong things are happening” – this should be something basic you would want in everyone you work with.
“The flagrant disregard for truth and decency“`- the new norm?
“The reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons” – the schoolyard bully?
“Heaven help us if this is politics as usual” – this feels like a huge cry for help and something higher to intervene
“Reckless, outrageous and undignified behaviour has become excused as telling it as it is” – politics in all its glory
“When this come from the top it is something else, it is dangerous to democracy”
“Our strength comes from our values” – the most powerful statement of all.
“It is often said that children are watching” – We are setting an awful example for the next generation
“Remaining silent and failing to act in fear of making enemies is dishonouring our principles” – Yep!
I think you get the idea…
If you want your business to flourish then be proactive about creating a culture that brings out the very best of people. and one where no one is afraid of speaking their mind in fear of the consequences.
Stop playing politics…
Well done to Jeff Flake for standing up to the biggest bully of them all, potentially the most powerful and most dangerous man in the world today, Donald Trump.
Check out the full speech by Jeff Flake, which already many are considering to be one of the most important of our age.
I met him in a hotel in Dublin one morning to discuss the possibility of working together on a few projects – our service offerings didn’t overlap but they could be combined making a powerful package for clients.
When I got there he had already arrived and had his laptop open and was sipping on a water.
I ordered a coffee and another as we chatted for quite a while making sure that we both understood each other’s offerings so we could best explore how to package the combined service.
He seemed like an ok guy and besides the work we actually did, we spent some time chatting about our teams, what motivates us and our general philosophy about business.
All was going well and after about two hours of in-depth discussions it was time to wrap up our meeting.
I went to pay and I asked him what he had ordered so I could pay for him as well “Don’t worry about me he said, all I had was tap water” he said.
An alarm bell went off in my head and a thought struck me …You miserable thing, sitting in their premises for hours, using their WiFi, using their space and having the audacity to order something for free!!
You had no problem taking from them without giving anything back, not even a tip to the waiter.
I paid my bill shook his hand and thanked him for his time and made a flash decision that I never wanted to do business with him as instinctively something felt wrong to me. To this day I have never contacted him again.
Was this me being stupid, unreasonable and quite dumb, walking away from a business opportunity because of what I perceived as a gesture of meanness?
I always look for decency and common courtesy in people – do they hold a door, let someone else go first, acknowledge the waiter, behave respectively to the receptionist, offer to pay?
In business do the personal traits of the people you deal with matter, as long as they are good at what they do – isn’t this the most important thing?
Legends and Losers
I was listening to another brilliant podcast by Christopher Lockhead and in this particular episode he was chatting about decency and character and ‘purpose before profit‘. When I heard the conversation it made me think of the meeting I had with my ‘tap water’ friend.
In this show he spoke about a business contact that he had met for lunch and how he distrusted him because of the lousy tip that he had left for the staff even though there was no issue with the meal. For him this was an important warning sign.
He mentioned the importance of good character in people as he found from his vast experience that ‘these people’ would always end up leaving you down when the going got tough and you needed them most.
Always listen to the signs – they rarely let you down!
Check out the fantastic and inspirational podcast series Legends and Losers where Chris has the most captivating dialogue with business leaders each week.
Thank you for your time today and for all of this information. I’ll discuss with a colleague early next week and will be back in touch afterwards.
Warm regards,
You are so nice and you must work for a great place I thought …
This was an email I received today from a prospect I had chatted to on the phone – after our chat I put a brief proposal together and emailed it to her.
You might think there was nothing special about her email that warranted me feeling so positive about it?
I did spend time assessing what their business needed and giving her advice and I did spend time working on a proposal – surely, this warranted some acknowledgement?
Of course it did!
Unfortunately, I find this basic level of courtesy has disappeared from business. In extreme cases we have met a client, spent a lot of time with them to get a firm grasp of their requirements, spent the best part of a day writing a plan, spent a few hours presenting to them and then….nothing.
It drives me bonkers – reply to my email, return a phone call. If you don’t want to want to work with us for whatever reason, that’s fine, but at least respect the amount of time, enthusiasm and work that we have done by replying and being courteous.
This speaks volumes about you and your organisation and it can be turned really easily with a tiny “thank you, we appreciated the effort but…”
Your reputation can often be about the small things as much as the big things!
I’ve just received a connection request from a person on LinkedIn.
I don’t recognise the person’s name and they describe themselves as being the General Manager of a company.
On the face of it, maybe a good person to connect with?
But….
..the person’s profile pic (not that young) is a selfie of them wearing shades and a baseball cap, pictured alongside another person. They are clearly having fun at some event and in their eternal wisdom have decided that this pic was a good one to use for their profile.
I am fascinated by LinkedIn and must admit that most users seem to have figured it out, and are quite good at putting their best foot forward.
However, I am still seeing oodles of accounts with typos, all lower case for their name, no description of what they do and really poorly chosen photos – holding a pint at a function does not make a great business photo!
LinkedIn is your personal, business website – it’s not Facebook!
Think carefully about the image you choose for yourself (and those in your team) as we all tend to judge each other by how we look.
Greg Canty Fuzion Blog 