Results tagged “time” from stevenfeinberg.com
Is your boss hungry? If your job is on the line you must make the decision makers hungry. What do hungry people do? They eat. Dinner is served. And you better be serving something they want or you will be sent back or in these times, sent packing.
For Star Trek fans, the analogy is to be Scotty, the Enterprise spaceships’ chief engineer. Whenever the ship was about to blow up, Captain Kirk would ask for, "More shields (or power), Scotty."
Scotty’s reply was never ‘no problem.’ Rather,
Scotty would say, “I dunnot (Scottish accent) know if I can do it Captain.”
Captain Kirk: "We need this up in 10 minutes."
Scotty: "It will take at least 30 minutes."
Next scene we see, the ship is saved, once again. Scotty is a hero and lives (keeps his job) for another day.
Just a movie and TV show? Of course, but survivors make themselves indispensable. When your boss discusses issues this is not the time to say ‘no problem’. That may sound strange since most advice would be to think you should say, “Yes, sir/ma’am.” You certainly don’t want to alienate anyone, but your contribution should be positioned as key to the survival of the organization, now and in the future. You must make them hungry (without being obnoxious or foolish) and you are the only one who can feed them. If it really is no problem you are expendable sooner rather than later.
To make them hungry, you must now be adaptable, you must be the one who allays their fears of failure.
Your Advantage-Maker skills must be exercised and refined.
Shift time to produce urgency for your contribution.
Shift interaction to change the game from your need to the company’s need.
Shift perception to take on a winning mindset and influence perceptions to see you as the go to player who can multiply your value to the company.
Shift structure to shape behavior, reducing wasteful inefficiency and cumbersome conflict, this will align and advance the organization for speed, simplicity and ease.
Your talent and contribution matter. Don't forget about quenching their thirst and giving them a dessert as well. Anyone who doesn't think that people aren't spending on sweets in the recession hasn't looked at how waistlines grow in times of stress.
I wonder if you are hungry for knowing how to influence your boss, if so that should confirm that creating desire is most important for you to learn now.
You shift time to create possibilities. TIVO has shifted time on your television viewing. Walt Disney envisioned Disney World by imagining a future in Orlando, Florida, and then making it a reality.
You can identify your own time profile or time IQ:
The Now or Never folks need immediate reactions, but may press too hard, move too fast and miss opportunities that a little perspective may have landed.
The Eventual, Steady Eddy types who take their time and have a long time frame, they deliver results over time but they miss market changes and can’t adjust fast enough to opportunities.
The Same Old, Same Old, Past Oriented, let’s not break it if it works while the competition runs right by with innovations.
The Time Shifters who are able to adjust their time frame, they can take action now, be patient to grow organizations and companies, use what worked in the past but not get stuck in any one time frame. For Advantage-Makers there is no time like the present to create the future.
What do most people think of their time shifting?
Most people think they are time-shifters but in fact when they get stuck or shoot themselves in their own foot its because they haven’t made the right time shift.
Now or Never tends to press to hard.
Steady Eddy delays when they should be pressing the point.
Same old, Same old doesn’t consider future changes.
You can use time shifting in your negotiations. By adjusting time frames you can help overcome resistant thinking. For example, if the customer says they can't buy today, have your customer imagine doing business with you in the future rather than right now. At that point they will be more open to considering your offer. And while its likely to be later, at least it is later, and you might get them to open up a new train of thought in the process.
Pay attention to the time horizon present in your thinking, then shift it and you will find solutions you hadn't thought of before.
Advantage-makers spot opportunities in problems - and a recession can be a real problem. And there's the opportunity. Everyone wants their problems solved.
Most people think about taking advantage of an opportunity, shift to focus on how you can take advantage of a problem.
People became millionaires during the Great Depression. And while I don’t know any personally, I don’t think they were all robber barons. Some businesses typically do fine, such as automobile and truck parts.
Be an Advantage-Maker inside your organization. You can either create the horse to ride or pick a winning horse. Your choice. Finding a horse to ride may be faster, simpler and easier at this time.
The first Advantage-Point:
Adapt and Stretch - the person with the widest range of responses wins. Non-adaptiveness is costly.
It's not the best who wins, its who is most adaptive
While most people are engaged in cutting and reducing, Advantage-Makers put their attention on creating more value. Now is the time to distinguish yourself in the marketplace compared to the cut and reduce crowd.
Dr. Fleming discovered peninsulin when a pesty mold killed his bacteria culture. Not a good thing. Fleming made a dimensional shift in his thought process and saw the mold not as a problem but a solution to another problem - that of ridding unwanted bacteria. Solutions are waiting to be found in the recession. Shift your efforts to providing targeted advantages for your customers.
A person with attention deficit disorder takes his malady - short attention cycles and becomes a master at disaster recovery – ever ready to multi-task and fix things rapidly.
What solution is looking for the problem you face?
Money is on everyone's mind now.
Use the code of the advantage maker: time, interactions, perceptions, structures. (T.I.P.S) with the two main problems people are concerned with: surviving and/or saving money. Focus on shifting one or a number of the T.I.P.S. and you may find your opportunity knocking.
For example, shift payments into the future, it will reduce resistance and accelerate sales. Speed is also a time shifting advantage. Taking too long will undermine your responsiveness to customers. Remember customers are really willing to leave now, applying the different shifts can create new value.
During the recession efficiency becomes the catchword.
There is nothing more efficient than creating an advantage.
