How To Create More Than Dog Years Of Progress

Not every year at every company is valued equally. Just as a year in a dog’s life is equivalent to seven human years, the same can be said for experience in certain companies.

Unlike many Monday-morning armchair pundits writing about corporate life, I can talk from experience having worked for Amazon on their Fashion Leadership Team during explosive growth. We had acquired Zappos and Shopbop, created MyHabit, and were sowing the early seeds of private label offerings. We were also breaking the mold at Amazon with innovative marketing strategies. That year was the equivalent of ten years at another company. I secured a seven-figure investment in 48 hours, got to sit the other side of the table from Jeff Bezos, and be a part of watching his brilliance at work, while laying the foundations for what became one of the fastest-growing profitable divisions of Amazon.

Everyone asks me what it was like to work at Amazon and whether all the stories are true.  I share examples in both of my books Thoughtfully Ruthless and Rapid Growth, Done Right.

Ask yourself these questions:

- Am I at a company where I am learning at the rate of dog years or even Amazon years?

- Did I make more than a years worth of progress in the last year?

- What about making more than a months worth of progress in the last month? ...or week... or yesterday?

Until you get specific enough and detailed enough consistently - your progress will not improve.

Ask your team - "How can I help so that we can make more than a days worth of progress today?"

That is how you hold the bar for performance high enough for Rapid Growth.

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

P.S. I hope you enjoyed this week's VAL-uable Insights, sign up here to get them in your inbox each Monday morning: http://valwrightconsulting.com/newsletter-sign-up/

How to Fight for What You Care About

"Why didn’t you speak up?”

…I didn’t think they wanted to hear a different opinion
…They won’t listen to me anyway
…I tried it a few times and it was awkward
…He didn’t really ask me what I thought
…I would have been the only dissenting voice in the room
…No-one else sees it like I do
…I don’t know that she wants to know what I REALLY think

Sound familiar?

I hear this far to frequently from remarkable executives who either don’t know how, or lose the energy to fight about what they care about.

“Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you”

This has to be my number one favorite quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

I watched the #RBG movie with our three daughters and my husband this weekend night and I shed tears of gratitude, pride, and for hope for our future in this country we have embraced as our home. 

“See you were right!” I told a brilliant executive last week - when she finally spoke up about an unpopular opinion and that lead to others agreeing with her and it changing the course of a multi-million dollar decision.

“Fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you”

Too often executives fight for what they care about but alienate everyone around them in the process. Achieving nothing but a short term release of their personal pressure valve,

How you influence and communicate with those different from you, those you might not know so well, those who make decisions differently, those who approach problems through a different lens takes thought, time, and a finesse that really pays off.

I wake up to many messages each day from leaders in all industries, from all functions telling me how the stories I tell and the tools I share in my Rapid Growth, Done Right book helped them with a board meeting they were about to walk into, a team meeting they were planning for, or a tough conversation they needed to have with a peer.

Are others around you joining you or resisting you?

…or maybe you aren’t speaking up when you should so no-one knows what you really care about

It is time.

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

P.S. I hope you enjoyed this week's VAL-uable Insights, sign up here to get them in your inbox each Monday morning: http://valwrightconsulting.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Are You Making The Most Of Your Eight Seconds?

1980's music and Banksy. Now that is my kind of movie! We just watched the documentary "Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art" and it reminded me just how you can capture anyone's attention with music and art. Banksy features in many of my talks, workshops, and books because he epitomizes attention grabbing ways to get anyone to think differently.

Museum attendees only spend an average of eight seconds looking at each piece of art, according to a British study at the Tate Gallery, but Banksy has managed to find new ways to get his audience to pay attention to his work. He created a treasure hunt in New York; not only did you have to find the art installation across the city of New York, you had to call a number to hear him describing in detail what he created and why. One installation was a truck filled with stuffed animal puppets with their heads poking out of cracks in the back squeaking for help. I called the number on the back and it said:

"This is a piece of sculpture art, and I know what you’re thinking, ‘Isn’t it a bit subtle?’ This truck contains over 60 cuddly soft toys on the road to a swift death. However, in order to bring them to life, four professional puppeteers are required, strapped into bucket seats, dressed entirely in black lycra, pulling on an array of levers with each limb and given only one toilet break a day – proving that the only sentient beings held in lower esteem than livestock are mime artists"Banksy certainly got my attention for more than eight seconds on that one!

Are you provoking and inspiring your employees and encouraging interaction? Many leaders unfortunately revert to email. When I work with executives and observe communication between leaders and employees, I notice that it is tedious, monotonous and primarily email focused – and three-quarters of it never actually gets read!

Do you have an executive team meeting, an employee virtual gathering or a customer event where you need to grab attention and get your message across? - Let's talk!

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

P.S. I hope you enjoyed this week's VAL-uable Insights, sign up here to get them in your inbox each Monday morning: http://valwrightconsulting.com/newsletter-sign-up/