Month: January 2023

leadership dot #3830: smells

January 21, 2023January 20, 2023by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

I volunteered to participate in a Smell Identification Test sponsored by the Michael J. Fox Foundation. The organization is partnering with Indiana University to study the link between loss of smell and brain diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s — who knew there was a connection?

After answering a series of questions online, I received my tests in the mail, consisting of four booklets and a pencil. Each book had 10 scratch ‘n sniff questions with four multiple choice answers each — for example, did the odor smell most like: a) honey, b) pizza, c) orange or d) bubble gum? Or another: a) clove, b) baby powder, c) leather or d) apple? It reminded me of sniffing Mr. Sketch markers and trying to determine what scent was represented.

What impressed me was the lengths they obviously went through to ensure that people receiving the tests could complete them correctly. Each booklet had pages cut in diminishing lengths so that the answer key lined up exactly with the question. The pages were colored to match the same color column on the answer key. After completing the test manually, answers were entered into a portal, also color-coded, and a replica of the final summary page was shown to allow participants to confirm that their pencil version matched the online answers before submitting. And all this is multiplied by four booklets for thousands of volunteers. Not a cheap study!

Think about the steps you take to make it easy for people to give you the information you need. The study provided many examples of what you could do: supplying the pencil, color-coding, cutting pages, allowing opportunities to double-check before submission, and keeping the form itself free from extraneous information. All that intentionality creates the sweet smell of success!

Volunteers are still needed. If you’re over 60 and want to learn about taking the test yourself, click here.

leadership dot #3829: thin

January 20, 2023January 19, 2023by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

Since 2013, Amazon customers have been able to make purchases through Amazon Smile and designate a charity to receive .5% of their eligible purchases. It doesn’t sound like much, but worldwide Amazon has donated over $449 million to charities through this process.

Ten years into it, Amazon has done something too few companies do — review the program and decide to end it. “The program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped,” they shared in an email to Smile participants. Over 1 million charities have received donations, making the amount contributed to each too small to make a noticeable difference. Instead, Amazon has designated a short list of causes and is giving significant amounts to them, including $2 billion to housing equity, funding computer science curriculum, helping food banks, and deploying its massive logistical capacity to aid disaster relief.

Several takeaways from Amazon’s decision: 1) Little efforts do add up. My personal $23.68 in Smile donations doesn’t seem like much, but when multiplied by the millions of Amazon customers it created a half-billion dollars’ worth of contributions. Don’t discount the cumulative impact of small. 2) Yet, spreading yourself too thin can diminish any impact that you may have. Going deep may sometimes be better than going broad. 3) Create a process to evaluate where you stand with 1 or 2 — are you making big progress one small step at a time or are you so diffused that the ultimate impact is lost? Don’t just let programs and processes run on autopilot without a scheduled critical review.

It was probably a difficult decision to end something that on many measures is working, but the key is whether it is achieving what you set out to do long term. Be able to smile about that.

leadership dot #3828: question

January 19, 2023January 18, 2023by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

Whenever I ask Google a question, I realize that I am not the first one to do so. It used to amaze me — that someone else wanted to know the things that I asked, but now I have come to expect that my query will pop to the top and be a pre-populated answer that others have inquired about before me.

Whether it is the release date for the Red Fox stamps, the distance from BWI to Hagerstown, the coil size required to bind 100 pages, or the connection between smell loss and brain health — someone has gone before.

So, why is it that with Google we don’t have the hesitancy around asking, but in person, we hold back from fear of asking a “dumb question?” The next time you’re in a classroom or a meeting, don’t stay quiet. Google shows us that others are likely to have the same question as you do and everyone would benefit if you asked it.

leadership dot #3827: gap

January 18, 2023January 16, 2023by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

In my quest to find a new television series to watch (dot 3818), I settled on Bridgerton. Imagine my surprise when the first season ended — after only eight episodes. Eight! That is more like a long movie than a television series.

I think of the “good old days” — even as recently as 2019 — when shows like my previous series Madam Secretary had 23 episodes per season. Now that is a series!

But the dynamics and logistics have changed due to the streaming practice of dropping a whole season simultaneously. Now, the entire year must be completed before any are released, condensing the production into shorter and shorter timeframes.

Think about how you deliver your content. Do you truncate what you offer so you are able to provide it all at once or do you create more robust material and make it available as you complete it? How you manage the gap between your offerings can make all the difference.

leadership dot #3826: pills

January 17, 2023January 16, 2023by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

Remember those word problems you had in grade school math? Well, here’s an adult version for you:

You are a patient who just had surgery. You come home at 9 pm, loopy after an exhausting day, and open the bag containing six bottles of pills that the hospital sent with you. You are to take Pill A three times/day, Pill B every four hours, Two of Pill C every six hours, Pill D once per day, Pill E once per day, and Pill F only if needed. What pills do you take now?

It’s a real-life scenario that has me wondering why someone hasn’t invented a medicine dosage app — like the loan calculators where you plug in how much you want to borrow at what rate and it spits out a schedule. Don’t we have the technology for an app where you could plug in the above variables and it would produce a schedule — take Pill A now, Pill B at 1 am, etc.? Not only would it be easier on the patient, but it would also create a higher likelihood that the correct dosage was taken.

There were clear directions on the bottles pertaining only to the individual medicine but no one provided information that created a solution in the aggregate. If you are responsible for sharing information that has multiple components, spend the time to curate a message that reflects the whole instead of the pieces. Everyone who receives it will thank you.

leadership dot #3825: unassuming

January 16, 2023January 15, 2023by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s first professional job was to serve as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. It’s an unassuming building, built in 1885, that you would pass by without a second thought if it did not have a prominent sign highlighting its place history.

Dexter Avenue — now Dexter Avenue King Memorial — welcomed King as its pastor in 1954, just as he finished his doctorate. I’m not sure what the expectations were for a newly-minted pastor but I’m sure King exceeded them.

In addition to leading the congregation in spiritual pursuits, King was an active participant in the civil rights movement. From his basement office, he organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott — a seminal event in the quest to end racial discrimination in the South.

King did not need a big building, fancy office, or much notoriety to demonstrate his leadership. In his own unassuming way, he was able to mobilize a city, and ultimately a nation to take notice of the injustices.

Take a lesson from Dr. King and begin where you are. You can make a difference from wherever that is.

My sisters at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery

leadership dot #3824: tag

January 15, 2023January 14, 2023by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

What item rocketed to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list in December? It wasn’t something that Santa brought to the kids, rather it was Apple Air Tags. These small little tracking devices were initially designed to help people find their keys but after the Southwest Airlines debacle, people raced to buy them to put inside their luggage. There have been stories of people tracking their bags to residential addresses when the airline reported them to be at the airport, and others hunting down bags on their own thanks to the tag’s location-finder. It’s not a bad idea even in the best of times.

Whenever there is a problem, there is always someone else who benefits from it. Apple benefits from Southwest’s meltdown. Home improvement stores benefit after a natural disaster. Towing and repair companies see increased business after a major accident.

Take a broad view of what problem your organization is solving and be prepared to mobilize when that problem occurs. All downsides have an upside for someone.

leadership dot #3823: mark

January 14, 2023January 13, 2023by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

When I was looking for a small gift for my golf-crazed nephew, I stumbled upon these Sharpie “ball marking pens.” Perfect — I thought — until I saw the $29.99 price tag. I didn’t think they could be serious, but they were.

Staples sells a pack of four of the exact same things — minus the fancy packaging — for $6.89!

If you ever doubt that presentation makes a difference, think of this. Or fancy restaurants. Or Starbucks. Or cosmetics. Or any of a hundred other things that are perceived to have extra value just by how they are packaged.

It’s worth the extra thought to name things according to the benefits they provide (ball marking) instead of simply what they are (mini-Sharpies). Mark that down as a communication tip to remember.

leadership dot #3822: catalyst

January 13, 2023January 12, 2023by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

I recently wrote an article about our region’s Community Foundation and the work it has been doing for the past twenty years. During its two-decade history, the Foundation has served as a “catalyst and convener” to tackle some of the area’s toughest challenges: access to health care, brain health, literacy, small-town vitality, energy, access to college or training, resources for immigrants, and equity, just to name the more recent subjects.

My takeaway from the conversation was that you don’t have to have the answers in the beginning. The Foundation utilizes community conversations, convenes diverse leadership panels, leverages challenge grants, brings together a wide range of partners, conducts assessments and audits, showcases data, and starts the process of determining solutions to vexing issues.

It’s frequently the case that people agree that X is a problem, but don’t agree on a plan to resolve it. Too often the process gets stuck there and nothing gets over this hump to at least enact something toward a full solution. The Community Foundation serves in the role of the instigator — to use Collective Impact and strategic learning models, system approaches, and good old-fashioned listening to help people articulate the issues and commit to a starting point.

We spend so much time arguing about the problem and what doesn’t work. It would be far more productive for all if you served in a “community foundation” role for however you define your community and get the ball rolling on solutions.

leadership dot #3821: veil

January 12, 2023January 11, 2023by leadership dots by dr. beth triplettLeave a comment

My sister was cleaning out her basement and found my First Communion veil — a relic that is now 55 years old! She couldn’t bring herself to throw it away (even though she probably had it because she wore it in subsequent years to save money) — so she mailed it to me. I put it on, had a good laugh, took a few pictures — and promptly offered it to our 4-year-old neighbor to use for dress-up!

I have learned that it is easier (for me, anyway) not to accumulate things. If I add the veil to a nostalgia box, it will remain there until that same sister is cleaning out my basement after I’m gone. Better not to keep it at all if it’s not one of the precious few mementos that I wish to preserve. (Files of paper or books on the other hand…)

It is hard to get rid of things, despite what Marie Kondo preaches. Purging takes time and repeated decision-making depletes your emotional energy. Save yourself trouble on the back end by routinely donating, recycling, or tossing things you are no longer using. You can visit Memory Lane in photographs instead!