Capture information during the meeting

You already have an agenda so the simplest thing to do is use it as the outline for notes you take during the meeting. And please, please take notes. I am sure there are power tripping, Gordon Gecko types that relish the grand entry of plopping down at the conference table with a self confident greeting like "so, what can I do for you today?" If you can, get up and leave these meetings before they have a chance to get started. The best meeting is one where everyone starts with pen over paper and an agenda in front of them. If you don't take notes it comes off as disrespectful. You can take notes on a legal pad, in a notebook, on your iPad or laptop. It does not matter. Ideally your system should be technology agnostic.

If there is a whiteboard or flip chart in use during the meeting take pictures before it gets erased or flipped to the next page. I do this all the time with my iPhone and it works brilliantly. If the meeting is happening in my conference room I will send these pictures straight to the color laser printer so we can refer back to them and pass them around the table easily.

The challenge when it comes to capturing information is striking the balance. You are not trying to take dictation. But at the same time you do not want your notes to be so cryptic and concise that they are of no use days or weeks down the road. Don't be so concerned about months and years down the road. We are going to cover that later. Taking good notes is as much art as science. You may vary the level of detail you try to capture based on the type of meeting. In some meetings I scribble furiously. In others my notes are spartan. It just depends. Find the style that allows you to be most engaged, and that also allows you to record details that must be recalled later.

Keep track of action items

I believe the secret to effective note taking is being able to pull action items out of the text at a glance. You need to develop some method so that action items jump off the page, and it is readily apparent who needs to do what next. There are lots of ways to do this. My own system is very simple. If there is something that I am going to need to do as a result of the meeting I put an empty check box in the left margin of my notes. If I am taking notes in a text file I begin the line with two square brackets like this []. If someone else in the meeting is responsible for some followup action item I put an empty circle in the left margin. In a text file I use opening and closing parentheses like this ().

I have seen people draw a vertical line dividing the page into two columns with the left column taking up two thirds of the page and the right column one third. The smaller column on the right is used for action items. This method is similar to a format I like a lot from Behance called the Action Method. But as cool as their fancy paper is I can't use it because it doesn't meet the most important criteria. It is not simple enough to be ubiquitous.

This is the main point. It does not matter which method you use, but keep it simple. You need some type of format for marking action items in your notes, and it must work no matter where you are or what medium you are using. I like my system because it works in my Moleskine notebook, a text file in Byword, a picture of a whiteboard, an agenda prepared by someone else or the back of someone's business card. Remember, keep it simple.

Communicate the action items after the meeting

As soon as possible after the meeting confirm with each attendee the specific action items agreed to during your time together. A quick email is the best way to do this. It only takes a few minutes if you do it right after the meeting is over. But if you wait, even fifteen minutes, the time it takes to complete this step can grow by a factor of 10. There is a good chance that you wrapped up the meeting with a quick recap of action items. If you did the recap it takes only a couple of minutes to review your notes and get those items into an email.

If you wait there are a couple of problems. First, you must locate your notes. Second, if your notes were less than complete there is a good chance you will not notice a missing action item that was agreed to early or late in the meeting. Third, and most important, one of the attendees may have forgotten that they consented to carry out an action item. Now, you have to spend even more time negotiating with someone's bad memory. And rather than argue with a client you will probably end up adding this item to your own list. So procrastination not only results in inefficiency on your end, it also tangibly addsd to your work load.

When scheduling your meetings go ahead and block out 15 minutes afterward to recap your open items and followup with attendees. Then, once everyone has left the conference room resist the urge to go refill your coffee cup or wind down with a stroll around the office. Take your butt back to the conference room, spread out your notes, open up your laptop and bang out the email so everyone gets it before they have a chance to get into their next appointment. It will only take you three minutes, and it will save you loads of time down the road. I know, I know. I said fifteen minutes. I'll tell you what to do with the other twelve later.

Your action items need a system of their own

Any action items from the meeting also need to get entered into whatever system you use to keep track of todo items and tasks. My favorite system for this type of stuff is David Allen's "Getting Things Done.", but you can use whatever system works for you. Law firms have traditionally used tickler systems. Some businesses use project management software or unified task management applications. It really doesn't matter. You can use index cards, a notebook, your smartphone, whatever. Just be sure you use a system that you follow religiously. That is how you keep things from falling through the cracks. I am a Mac nerd so I like OmniFocus. There are dozens of task management applications out there. Find one, buy into it and use it every day.

Your system also needs to account for items that others are responsible for completing. This is critical. It is very likely that several weeks later someone from the meeting may ask you for something that was actually on their list. When they see your blank look don't be surprised if the response is "you do remember promising to get that, don't you?" The GTD system avoids this kind of miscommunication by keeping such items on a "waiting" list. Every so often you review your "waiting" list and send reminders to the people who have outstanding tasks to complete. Over time, your colleagues begin to understand that you track this stuff every day, you can tell them the date they agreed to do something, and you stay on top of them until they get it done. Pretty soon they don't question you anymore, they just do it.

Recording your action items and the items you are waiting on others to finish will use up another three minutes of your post meeting time. You have nine minutes left.

Archive your notes for future reference

There is a very good chance that you will never need your notes again. After all, the purpose of the meeting was to decide on next actions and the focus after the meeting was on getting them done. If you need to go back to your notes it is most often because something that someone said they were going to do did not get done. For instance, an insurance agent is asked for a quote and during the fact finding meeting the client says they are not really concerned with flood insurance. The agent agrees to work up a quote excluding flood coverage and does so. After the quote is received the client complains that the quote does not include flood coverage.

If all the steps above were followed the client received an email shortly after the meeting stating that a quote would be forthcoming that excludes flood coverage. If the client missed that email the agent could go back and review his notes with the client covering the part of the conversation that dealt with flood insurance. But this is rare. Here is what I suggest.

Archive your meeting notes in their original form. If they were taken on the back of a cocktail napkin scan the napkin into a filing system that makes sense for you. If you took notes on your computer save the file using the same filing system. This is where the other nine minutes come into play. It will take you less than one minute to scan in or save your notes. Take the rest of the time to write up a short paragraph recapping the meeting. This is the meeting in your own words and it is invaluable in those cases where you have to go back six months or more and review notes. The absolute best tool for this is dictation software. I use Dragon Dictate when I am in the office. In less than ten minutes I can dictate 500-1000 words that succinctly capture my impressions of the meeting. When I am out of the office I use a dictation service that is saved to speed dial on my phone. I dial the number, enter my PIN and dictate up to four minutes of notes. When I get back to the office these notes are in my email and I save them to the appropriate file.

A lot of work

This sounds like a lot of work, but it really is not work. It is a system. Systems are challenging to setup. You need to carefully select your tools and develop the habit to use the system. But once the system is running it does not create work, it saves time, and it adds to your effectiveness. If you are struggling with meetings or if you cannot seem to get your arms around one meeting before the next one starts I encourage you to setup a system and use it.

There is an old saying that “no man is an island unto himself.” This is certainly true in the world that I live in. I am nothing without my clients. So when we have time with them it is important that we use it to maximum advantage. And having an agenda in place well before the meeting starts exponentially increases the productivity and value of the experience.

The fact is that we have become so dependent on asynchronous communication that we have forgotten what it means to prepare for, execute and followup on face-to-face or virtual conferences. Email requires no preparation to read or answer. The same is true for text messaging, Facebook and Twitter. Professional firms are using all of these venues for client communication and increasingly I think it is causing the quality of real time client interaction to suffer. In the interests of full disclosure and confession I will admit that this is an area that I am resolutely focused on improving. More than that, I plan to make this one of my core competencies. I believe it is such a neglected area in our profession that the opportunities to differentiate from the competition are huge. Everything I am going to say applies to both “live” and “virtual” conferences. I am a huge fan of tools like GoToMeeting and Skype. I also firmly believe that electronic meetings can suck just as bad as in-person meetings. This post is about making them exceptional.

It all starts with the meeting before the meeting. In their book, The McKinsey Mind, Ethan Rasiel and Paul Friga talk about how ingrained the interview guide has become in McKinsey’s culture. The authors interviewed former McKinsey consultants who had moved on to lead key positions inside other companies. In these interviews the alumni were often astounded at how frequently their colleagues came to meetings poorly prepared. The interview guide is the McKinsey consultant’s secret weapon.

It is basically a list of the questions the consultant would like to discuss with the client. In other words, it is a detailed agenda. What makes the interview guide particularly effective is that it gets sent to the client at least 24 hours prior to the meeting. There are three things happening here.

First, the consultant is NOT procrastinating when it comes to meeting preparation. I know that there are people who say they work better under pressure, but this is crap. What they really mean is that they stop procrastinating and START working only when they are under pressure. It has nothing to do with working better. It just means that it takes a deadline to get them into gear. Given the proper amount of time to prepare we all do better work when we don’t wait until the last minute. McKinsey consultants prepare their interview guides days in advance of their meetings. They have thought about what they want to ask, they have vetted their questions, they have gone back and taken out the irrelevant, and they only present the most important issues to the client. In other words the quality of the pre-meeting work is stellar.

Second, the client is given the opportunity to properly prepare for the meeting. When was the last time you were called into a meeting and had no idea what the conversation was going to cover? Or maybe you just had a vague idea based on some other things that were going on at the time. Remember how unsettling and stressful that experience was? But we do this to our customers on a weekly, if not daily, basis. At the very least sending your customer an agenda before the meeting reduces the stress and anxiety they experience leading up to the meeting. But it can do a lot more than that.

The best decisions are made on the basis of good data and good analysis. But if we don’t tell the customer what types of data we need there is little chance they will bring it to the meeting. This is inefficient and uncalled for. You should give the people you are meeting with the opportunity to gather their facts and study them. You should set an expectation that if data is needed as part of the meeting agenda it will, in fact, be brought to the meeting. You can greatly enhance the quality of decisions made during your conferences if you give everyone a chance to come properly prepared.

Third, an advance agenda sets an expectation that real work will get done during your conference. People expect that options will be debated. They know that decisions will be made. They know that projects will continue to move forward. If you send out an advance agenda people will take you more seriously. You will find that attendees arrive on time. They come expecting to be engaged and they are primed for action. There is nothing like an audience eager to get down to work.

Much of the negative talk about meetings stems from situations where organizers do a terrible job leading the conference. I have never heard someone say, “Jill did a fantastic job prepping us for the meeting, and she really kept us on point. But that meeting sucked!” It doesn’t happen. As you go, so go your meetings. If you want people to accomplish great things under your leadership do them the favor of preparing an agenda. And get it to them at least 24 hours before go time.

Another example is the difference between a pool service company and a professional plumber. The pool service company provides convenience for a fee. If the homeowner is retired or has adequate free time it may not make sense to pay for convenience and a knowledge of pool chemicals. That knowledge can be acquired (possibly after the trial and error of recovering a green pool or two) and the time can be sacrificed. But a plumber is another matter. If one does not know how to detect a leak or how to acquire and use the tools to fix the leak no amount of time or trial and error will suffice to get the job done.

In your business you need to take a fresh look at your product or service through your customers' eyes. Is what you do something that your customer could do on their own with enough time or trial and error experience? If the answer is yes you will may face competition from the worst possible place, your customer. But that is not all. Competition will also come from other businesses who increasingly commoditize your product or service.

Ask yourself what features or modifications you can make so that there is little possibility of your customers being able to compete with you. The dry cleaner that is worried customers may start laundering their own shirts needs to find a way to make the service so convenient and worry free that leaving would be horribly inconvenient for the customer. Two ladies in my neighborhood have done this by creating a service that picks up the laundry every Thursday and delivers every Tuesday. I can't compete with that. Even if I wanted to do my own shirts there is no way I can match the convenience or time savings.

We have done this at Axiom by focusing on clients that desire strategic planning services instead of just tax returns. Sure they may be able to do the returns themselves eventually. Who knows what QuickBooks or some other software provider will innovate in the future. A day is probably coming where you can pay an extra $100 and have your accounting software prepare a business tax return for you. But can it help you put together a plan of attack and accountability to meet your 5 and 10 year goals? Probably not. That is something inherently suited to outside help. So we have invested heavily in it.

In the services world competition from your customer base can be just as fierce as it is from other businesses who do what you do. That is your fault. Build things that your customers value, but which they have no desire or ability to build themselves.

During the first year or so after hiring a new IT guy things would go great. We would have the occasional problem, place the call, suffer through the afternoon, and he would come fix the problem. But as word got out and the IT guy's client base grew it would take longer and longer to get a response. This pattern became so predictable that I remember asking the last IT guy that I hired "are you committed to growth, because if you are not going to grow your business we are not going to hire you."

We needed him to grow. I knew we were always going to be small potatoes. Our network might add one or two machines, but we were never going to rival the bank across the street or the HR company across town. These were the clients he wanted to work with down the road, and when he did I needed to know there would be someone else on his team to take care of us. Your customers expect the same of you.

Most small businesses start out with owner/operators that handle critical customer facing roles. As the owner's business and managerial skill sets develop he eventually wants to move out of some of these roles and on to what are perceived as bigger and better things. These are good things. They are the things that entrepreneurs do. But while the owner's skill sets have grown the business as a whole may not be ready to move forward. The owner has to make sure that there are people who have been trained in those tasks that he or she is leaving behind. Or the business has to make a strategic decision not to serve those customers any longer.

Take the example of a real estate agent. At first the average home sale of this agent is $150,000. As experience, skill sets and referral networks grow there comes a day when the last three listings are for homes in the $500,000 - $600,000 range. Now, when a homeowner with a $175,000 listing calls in the agent has a problem. If the new listing is taken the customer may experience the second-class citizen problem of poorer service and less responsiveness. Even if service doesn't slip the agent may feel like the listing is a waste of precious ability and resources.

To solve this the agent can commit to growth by bringing on a junior agent. When the junior agent comes on board do you think he will be spending time on the $175,000 listings or the $500,000 listings? It makes the most sense for the veteran to let the rookie replace him on the lower end of the business. This frees up capacity to serve the higher end of the market, and it helps insure the veteran agent's skills will continue to improve as more time is spent in the more challenging market.

But the agent has another choice as well. He could make a strategic decision to tell the $175,000 listing that he cannot take any new business in that range. This is not a growth strategy as much as a niche or specialization strategy. It still allows the agent to spend more time in the higher area of the market, but it also has the disadvantage of failing to capitalize on all the goodwill previously created serving customers in the lower end of the market. And, in truth, it is the less entrepreneurial strategy. It is not the one current customers prefer because there is a very good chance that the agent's ability to sell a more expensive house is going to outpace the customer's ability to buy a more expensive house.

If you are good at what you do this will usually be the case. You will grow and develop skill sets faster than your legacy customers can take advantage of them. This means that you will rarely get to use your best gifts on the customers who have been with you the longest. You owe it to those people to leave a wake of well trained, conscientious employees who are eager to serve them in ways that will honor the start they gave you.

If you feel like you are being held back because you have not yet committed to growth here are some things you can do.

• Make a list of the customers or customer types that you are serving now that are also holding you back. These are interactions that are not increasing your professional competency even though they may be contributing to the bottom line.

• Figure out how much you would have to pay someone to take care of these customers for you.

• Sets sales targets at the lower end of your market or service spectrum that will allow you to hire that person and spend more time where you should be.

• Execute against those sales targets, hire the person, train them to take over the customers at the lower end. Rinse, repeat.

When it comes to the numbers many people have a hard time getting their head around the concept so I will provide an example. Let us say your company makes custom boats. To date you have sold mostly 18-24 foot models. You believe the future of the company lies in higher margin hull designs in the 32-40 foot range and wish to purchase two molds to move into this market. The only thing stopping you is time. You do not have the capacity to sell to existing 18-24 customers while prospecting or the 32-40 foot buyers.

Instead of trying to split your time you need to focus intensely on increasing sales in the 18-24 foot category. With help from your CPA you determine that eventually you will need a $60,000 per year sales position to handle the 18-24 customers full time. With benefits and taxes this comes out to about $6,000 per month. The average gross profit on an 18 foot model is $2,500. Therefor you need to increase sales by at least three units per month to be able to afford the new salesperson.

You assemble your team and determine the best strategy to increase unit sales an average of threes units per month, and then you execute like crazy. When you have hit the mark three months in a row you pull the trigger on the new hire and dedicate yourself to getting the new 32-40 foot models into production.

This is not rocket science, but it does require some forethought and some discipline. With proper planning and execution you can make sure that all of your customers are being taken care of and that you are continually advancing your professional competency.

How to Overcome Procrastination with a Question

Maybe it is because I consider myself naturally inquisitive. Maybe it is because our brains respond to questions instinctively. Maybe it is because it was written down once in a David Allen book somewhere. For whatever reason I have found that I can achieve a very focused state by simpling reframing a task in the form of a question. This sounds trivial, but the realization alone has allowed me to get things off my task list much sooner. Consider the following example.

I have an item on my task list.

Research keeping depreciation off personal property in a personal holding company.

This item has been there for too long and I need to get it resolved because it is important to a client of mine. It could also mean more business for our firm. But the task of “research” is daunting. When it comes to getting things off your to do list Allen recommends breaking items down into their next physical task. That works great for cleaning out the garage or packing for the family the vacation. But knowledge work is more nuanced. Instead of the next physical action I would be better off to consider the next mental action I need to take.

This is where asking questions allows knowledge workers to kick productivity into high gear. GTD afficianodos know that the process of breaking next actions into more granular activities can get obscene. There is a law of diminishing returns. Getting so detailed as “squeeze the toothepaste for .6 seconds” does not add meaningfully to your quality of life. But in the area of knowledge work not only do we fail to consider the mental action over the physical, we also take on projects large enough to choke an entire hemisphere of the brain. By asking questions and getting more granular we can increase productivity and overcome pracrastination at the same time.

I have rewritten my task as a project and have broken it down into a few more mental actions.

Client xxxxx research project

Is there such a thing as non-business corporate property?

Is depreciation required for non-business corporate property, citation needed?

What documentation is required to substantiate personal property? Business property?

Is the allowed vs. allowable language going to kill us no matter what we do?

Ultimately, is there a way to preserve the basis at original cost for a number of years?

When I reframe the research task in this way I find that my brain is just itching to answer the first question. In the process of thinking about what questions need to be answered you actually start in on the task and that little bit of headway seeems to push through the procrastination bottlneck.

What does this have to do with running your business better? Whether we are working with a business that does something very tangible (manufacturing) or very intangible (law office) the process of working on the business tends toward the intangible side of the spectrum. When we work with business owners stuck in the tangible all day, every day, this switch to the intangible creates a very different to do list. For example, in the course of planning we might decide to “map the service delivery workflow and eliminate redundancies.” More than once I have left a management team with this sort of task on its to do list only to come back a week or a month later and find it still sitting there. But notice the difference an extra five minutes of planning can make. Let’s reframe the task as a question and break it into smaller parts.

What can we do to elminate redundancy in our service delivery?

Who are all the people directly involved in service delivery?

Indirectly involved?

What does each person do?

Are their activities running parallel or sequential?

How long does each activity take?

Why is each activity there?

Are there any we can get rid of?

Do they have to happen in the same order or is there a better way?

Who isn’t involved in service delivery that should be?

These are not tough questions to ask. Answering them may be more difficult, but unless you ask them the task of “mapping workflow” and “emiminating redundancies” can get overwhelming in a hurry.

The reason this type of on-the-fly planning isn’t practiced is the same thing that makes it so effective. It only takes minutes, literally. It doesn’t require a new piece of software, a weekend retreat or the latest tactics from a time management best seller. If you want to take knowledge work to the next level do this:

1. Buy a stack of 3x5 index cards.


2. Place your stack directly underneath your computer monitor.


3. Any time you are about to begin something that will take longer than 30 minutes pull out an index card and write the task across the top.


4. Spend 3–5 minutes listing all the micro steps required to complete your task.


5. Plunge ahead and get it done.

All we are talking about is 3–5 minutes. Brian Tracy famously said for every one minute spent planning we save twelve in execution. That may not hold true for a 30 minute project. Then again, how many times have you looked up after 90 minutes and thought “holy crap, why did that take so long?” Give it a try, you might be surprised.

You can tell how much authority a person has by what they can say "yes" to. The server at your favorite restaurant can bring you an extra serving of broccoli on the house, but the manager can comp your entire meal. The airline ticket counter can let you check an extra bag free of charge, but the captain can hold the plane at the gate. This post is about the power of yes and the fallacy of the power to say "no."

The Power to Say "No"

Every day you run into someone just itching to say "no" to you, from fast food drive through attendants, to corporate gate keepers, to the bank teller having a bad day. "No" is a power trip taken by the frustrated, peeved, and short tempered. It is a favorite word of people at the short end of their own proverbial stick. But the power of "no" is a fallacy.

Everyone can say "no." You need no special powers, no training, no desire to do anything other than utter a single syllable. If the unwashed masses can all say it, and they can do it regularly with little consequence, the two letter word may not indicate so much power as we think. The truth is, "no" is selfish word. One of the great time management tactics available to the overbooked, over committed and over worked is the magic of "no." If you have no time for yourself you probably need to say "no" more often.

But this doesn't describe most people. Most people have no problem putting themselves at the head of the line. If you doubt this just visit a toy store the weekend before Christmas. When someone finds themselves in the position to say "no" they also are in a great position to get what they want. And what do most people want? Sameness. Change is scary. Tasks I've never done before, suck. Taking risks is for younger people. Me? I want more of the same. And "no" is just the ticket.

"No" is the great perpetuator of the status quo. It is the hobgoblin of innovation. It is the sour puss at the birthday party. "No" is the easy way to say "not today, not ever." And it happens every day. It happens so often that people who say "yes" stand out as heroes, while the masses that say "no" exact a high price for their ability to be keep the upper hand.

The Cost of No

In most business interactions there is an audience of exactly two people, yourself and the person listening. And this leads us to the reason that hostage negotiators are taught never to say "no" to the bad guys. "No" creates an environment of me vs. you. It is the ultimate polarizer. It is the precursor to a zero sum game. And if one person must win and one person must lose that innocuous little word sets the stage for epic conflict, even in the smallest of affairs.

"No" puts your customers on the other side of the table. They have no choice but to treat you as the adversary. Once the lines have been drawn and you have placed yourself on the other side of the table it is game on. But it doesn't stop there. "No" permeates a culture rapidly. Soon employees are refusing help to one another, bosses are denying simple requests and no one feels any obligation to do anything but look out for themselves.

"No" allows your employees to vent their personal frustrations at the office. When customers become passive aggressive punching bags problems start surfacing everywhere. Think that new prospect is going to get an answer on the proposal at 5:01 on a Friday? Nope. Hoping that your longest and best customer gets a little extra attention on a service call? Think again. "No" will infect every aspect of a business, from record keeping to employee evaluations. No one is safe once you have let "no" enjoy free reign for a few weeks.

The Power to Say "Yes"

If you buy into all this talk about "no" you might also be thinking about a rousing staff meeting speech encouraging everyone to say "yes" more often. But it's not that easy. A culture of "yes" has to be deliberately nurtured if it is going to make any difference in operations. The power to say "yes" has to be built on a solid foundation.

• Team members must be granted the authority to say "yes," and it must be a formal acknowledgement from leadership.
• For it to mean something that authority cannot be given indiscriminately. It must be earned.
• The effect of "yes" must be demonstrated by leadership.

I will say a little about each of these points.

Formal granting of authority

There is a lot to be said for rites of passage. These are distinct points in time that separate one phase of life from another. The first time my dad let me mow the yard by myself was a rite of passage. My first sleep-away summer camp was a rite of passage. When my parents gave me the car keys for the first time it was a rite of passage. To be truly memorable and meaningful these events need to be formally acknowledged. It is one thing to grab the keys as your parents tell you to be careful and get home by 11. It is something else entirely for them to ceremoniously dangle the car key over your outstretched palm between thumb and forefinger while they look into your eyes and say "It all changes from here; we can't watch you anymore; we have to trust that you are going to look after yourself and those in your care." The power to say "yes" needs to be handed over like something sacred.

Too often we assume that team members know they should say "yes" to satisfy customers. But who would you rather have at the cash register? The person you assume knows what to do or the person who treats their responsibility like it has been handed down on stone tablets? Don't underestimate the power of granting your team explicit authority. Treat the power to say "yes" like something special and meant only for the trustworthy. If you do you will find that it is used with care and diligence. Treat it like yesterday's newspaper and you will see your team members do the same.

It must be earned

There is a parable in Matthew that says

"Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him."

To some this seems unfair, but to your customers it seems just. Your customers do not want the newest employee to have the unbridled authority to solve their problem. They want the manager or the senior person on the floor to be able to come to their rescue. Be careful about granting the authority to say "yes" to someone who has not earned it.

While "yes" has the power to delight it also has the ability to make things much worse. If a customer returns a broken product that has been recalled, and demands a replacement the employee without the wisdom to say "no" can create huge potential liability by granting the customer's demand. In service situations employees who indiscriminately reinforce bad customer habits circumvent processes. Left unchecked they will eventually undermine the company's work with customers who adhere to those same processes.

It must be demonstrated by leadership

Your team members need to experience what it feels like on the other side of the table when someone hears "yes." They need to hear you say it and experience the emotions that go along. This does not mean that you become a push over. It means that you listen a lot more. It means that you encourage conversations. It means that you look for opportunities to say "yes." Leaders are so accustomed to saying "no" that the habit of looking for chances to say "yes" is hard.

And when you say "yes" you have to make sure that you follow through and deliver. The only thing worse than a manager who says "no" all the time is one that says "yes" all the time. Employees are not stupid. They understand that not every request can be granted. Resources are limited; other people have to be considered; these are the rules of life. When you try to temporarily suspend reality by granting every request your employees will know you are full of it. What follows is an arbitrary granting of some requests and an arbitrary languishing of others.

You need to demonstrate a series of wins with your team where "yes" has been heard and "yes" has been seen. If you skip this step you will find that you have built a great group of people pleasers that cannot execute.

The Effect of "Yes"

Imagine a business where your team members start telling customers "yes...we can find a way to fix your problem," "yes...we can get that done today," "yes...I'd be happy to look into that." The most noticeable effect of the power of "yes" is that it creates a culture of delight. Saying "yes" is a selfless act, and those who use it to help others enjoy the feeling the accompanies the giving of a gift.

But a culture of "yes" also allows people to find fulfillment through work. To say "yes" a lot you have to love what you are saying "yes" to. You don't have to love anything about your work to say "no." Not surprisingly many of the people so proficient at saying "no" are miserable. When it becomes the cultural norm to say "yes" miserable people do not last very long. They either self weed or are culled from the herd by their peers. Those who are left see themselves playing a much larger role than delivering widgets or answering customer inquiries. They believe the world is a better place because of their role in it.

But your customers are not the only beneficiaries. The same way a culture of "no" bleeds over into employee interactions a culture where team mates respond with "yes" begins to enrich communications and employee effectiveness. Knowing that your co-worker will stop and help you drives many employees to look for the answer themselves a little longer lest they take advantage of someone they respect. It also encourages people to be a little more vulnerable around each other in asking for help. This process builds a more cohesive team with real relationships, not just 9-5 proximity to one another.

Finally, the culture of "yes" makes the win-win outcome the standard measure of the organization. People are no longer satisfied with the zero sum game whether it's played with fellow employees, customers, vendors or the boss.

Back to the Real World

I know it is not all rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes you need to say "no." There are plenty of good reasons to decline requests, demands and passive aggressive suggestions. But those reasons are elaborated over and over again in time management pieces and personal empowerment articles. I don't think I need to get into that. I want to take the other road, the one too often ignored. It is not the same as the idea that "the customer is always right." The decision to say "yes" is about the proper exercise of power. "No" may afford you the opportunity to put someone in the place you think they belong, but "yes" gives you the ability to put them in the place they aspire to. When it comes to role models I will take Mother Teresa over the disgruntled toll booth operator every day of the week.

I was talking with some other firm owners this week. While discussing what our ideal customer looks like this idea of optimism and determination came up. It is not surprising that we want to see this in our customers. It is a value we all aspire to. We want to see it not only in ourselves but in our friends, in our family members and in those people that we encounter every day. The greatest thing about the research reported in the Times article is that it excludes no one. In fact, those who have the odds against them are in the position of greatest opportunity. It is they who can demonstrate grit. The people you encounter who seem to be at the bottom, weighed down by a mountain of circumstances that argue against their eventual success, are the ones poised to surprise you. And if you are the one under the mountain? Take heart. No one finishes your story but you. Start writing.

Check it out here.