Randy Mayeux is a professional speaker and writer who gives more than 450 public presentations annually to various business and government audiences, non-profit groups and associations, and professional conferences. His monthly First Friday Book Synopsis at the Dallas Park City Club has attracted capacity crowds of business professionals from throughout the DFW metroplex for over 10 years.
Leave Nothing To Chance; Be Simple; Be Human And Engaging – Three Thoughts For You And Your Business
Thought #1 – Leave nothing to chance.
I stopped in on the 25th anniversary celebration for High Profile Staffing. Bronwyn Allen, the President, has been an in-and-out participant of the First Friday Book Synopsis over the years, and she is one of those high energy dynamos. I could only be there for a few minutes, but it was enough. 25 years and counting in this day and age does not come by doing shoddy work. It comes from leaving nothing to chance. And High Profile leaves nothing to chance.
Herb Kelleher once said that “if our rest rooms are dirty, people will think our engines don’t work.” Well, High Profile’s engines work just fine, because everything else was perfectly attended to. From the moment I arrived, there was energy, attention to detail, personal touches. Jock Stafford, the CEO (whom I had never met) was at the door, and we “hit it off”. Which tells me that he hits it off with everybody he meets, because we did not have long to make that happen. And then, as I went through the offices, there was food (good, tasty, creative food – which, by the way, was overseen by Jock’s wife, whose name tag bore the description “The REAL Boss”),color, buzz… You know, the kind of event that screams “we are very good at everything we do – you can see that in the way we covered every detail in this event.”
Oh, and by the way, early yesterday morning I received a reminder e-mail about the event, with parking instructions in case it was still raining (we had had quite a rain the day before). So the high quality of the event was evident before I ever showed up.
The lesson – leave nothing to chance.
Thought #2 – Be simple.
There are a few people who want to invest the time in looking for the very best, one step, one component at a time. But there are a whole lot more people – a whole lot! – who just want a quick and easy and “good enough” simple solution.
In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg tells the story of Target and its ability to target young mothers with just the right coupons to get them in the store, and keep them coming back. They know that a young mother, with a small child, has no time for the complex task of multi-store, leisurely comparative shopping. They want to walk in, find just what they need, and get out. (My daughter-in-law is discovering this with her 2 year old and one-month old daughters. These are our granddaughters I’m talking about. My impression is that she wants things really simple these days!)
So, this morning I was reading about IKEA’s new television: An Ikea Television? Why Not?: Ikea’s clever plan to sell you a piece of furniture with a TV attached to it, and how it might upend the TV manufacturing industry, by Matthew Yglesias. Yes, you read that right. IKEA is going to market their own television. No, it’s not better – but it’s good enough. And everything you need, cord management, sound, cabinet, will all be built into its one piece of furniture. No, it’s not the best. And that rare seeker of the best will go elsewhere. But it will be a quick, simple, one-stop, good enough solution. The article ended with this: In a world of good enough technology, the ability to avoid an extra trip may be all the selling point that’s really needed. I bet that they turn out to be right on this new bet of theirs.
The lesson — be the simple solution.
By the way, this is not a new idea. Anybody remember these marvels from my childhood days?
Here’s one — now turned into an aquarium
Thought #3 – Keep it human and engaging.
I don’t quite have as tangible an example of this as I do with the two others. But I’ve got a not-so-slight beef to get off my chest. I’m tired of inhuman, unengaging communications.
Last night, at the High Profile Staffing Anniversary, I made human contact. You know, eyeball-to-eyeball conversations. At moments like this you realize that all that advice to get out there and network is just a reminder to get out there and make a whole lot of human contact.
I have a couple of friends that I occasionally just call up and say let’s meet for lunch, just to talk through what I am wrestling with at the moment. And we talk, eyeball-to-eyeball.
When I speak, I try to make genuine contact with my audiences. That starts with topic selection and refinement (is this what this audience wants and needs to hear at this moment?) and then in the actual moment of delivering the message, it requires what the books call “eye contact,” but what I want to beef up just slightly with the phrase “eyeball-to-eyeball contact.” You know, genuine human contact. After all, those are human beings in that audience.
In other words, we are all, first and foremost, people. Before we are employees, before we are consultants, before we are task-doers, we are people. And people relate to each other with human contact.
Here’s one way this plays out. An e-mail is a wonderful tool. To convey details, (here’s a map to our location; click here) it can’t be beat. But an e-mail is only any good after there has been some sort of more human connection. Same with a voice mail. I don’t mind leaving a voice mail with “information.” “The address is; the name of the book I could not quite remember is…” But voice mail does not let you have the give and take , the ebb and flow, of human conversation. For “relationship connecting — business and personal,” voice mail is woefully inadequate. E-mail, voice mail — these are stops #s two and after. Step one (which we should repeat one and over again) is face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball conversation. (Or, at least, actual telephone person-to-person conversation, which is much better than voice-to-voice mail).
Do yourself, and the people you interact with, a favor. Interact; converse; show up. Have some conversations, eyeball-to-eyeball.
The lesson – keep it human and engaging.