In addition to a catchy melody, the “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” song comes with an inspirational back story.
Brenda Lee recorded it in 1958 — when she was only 13. Released as a single, it had a modest reception and became just one of hundreds of Christmas tunes. But the song had staying power and this year topped the Billboard Hot 100, making Lee, at age 78, the oldest person to ever top the chart. (She had a birthday a week later, breaking her own record at age 79.)
If you think of giving up because one of your projects has only lukewarm results, think of Brenda Lee and her Christmas tune. It took 65 years, but her song finally became Number One. Keep putting good work out into the universe without worrying about becoming an instant success. You may rock it decades later.
A social media post shared a slide from a teacher’s conference that read: “Young people do not hate math. They hate feeling confused, embarrassed, and humiliated by math.”
I could extend this analogy and say: “Old people do not hate technology. They hate feeling confused, embarrassed, and humiliated by technology.”
I’m sure you could keep the chain going and add in a number of things that cause angst more because of not understanding that from the process itself. Think about this the next time you are introducing a new _____ into your system and focus on helping people become comfortable with learning before you dismiss them as not interested or able.
Source: Lary Martinek at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, DC 2023
“Good is the enemy of great.” It’s the opening line in Jim Collins’ masterpiece that I think about all the time.
One of the more serious challenges that leaders face is creating a sense of urgency and receptivity to change when things are “ok.” No one likes to disrupt their comfort level when there isn’t a crisis or perceived problem. It’s much easier to allow things to continue as they are. On the other hand, if leaders induce too much pain into the system, people will become disgruntled and shut down.
Your job as a leader is to determine that sweet spot where you can make people feel the case for change without pushing too far. This may involve painting a clear vision of what “great” looks like or it may require inducing a bit of discomfort to highlight the downside of what is perceived as “good.”
But without some intentional intervention, it’s all but certain that you will just stay the course.
You can’t enter a store without being bombarded with Early Black Friday sales. It’s one more tradition that has morphed into an extended money grab and gotten away from its original focus. Christmas decorations have been out for weeks — or at Hallmark, since July — and soon valentines will be filling the shelves.
Now, everything is available for extended periods. All these “early” promotions dilute the intensity that occurs when there is actual anticipation — as used to occur when waiting for Thanksgiving so Santa could arrive, the window decorations could appear, and Christmas shopping could begin.
To replicate the enjoyment that comes from condensed activities, resist the temptation to do things “early.” Save the holiday decorating until Thanksgiving or December. Wait until the day after Thanksgiving to shop for those bargains. Hold off on the valentines until the calendar has turned. Don’t fall for the manufactured lure of “early.”
I was following a truck where the back panel read: “As long as you’re following us…follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I thought it was a clever way to promote social media followers by capitalizing on the double entendre of “following.”
It took some thought to pair the message with the medium, but it’s worth the extra effort to do so. Other examples are Pancheros Mexican restaurant’s napkins that say “In queso you need one,” playing off their signature chips and queso dish, or Hampton Inn’s coffee sleeves with “we hope you slept well” messages.
Random advertising is so pervasive that it becomes invisible. To have your message noticed, make it relevant to where it is being shared.
One of the tricks to running an effective meeting is to control the “conversational popcorn” that seems to frequently creep into gatherings. Popcorn is when people interject topics outside of the agenda (or ignore that they are on the agenda later). The discussion bounces from one topic to another — making it hard to come to a resolution about one thing before moving on to the next.
As a convener, I’d much rather have spirited members who want to contribute their thoughts and ideas, rather than have the proverbial crickets of silence, but sometimes that passion plays out as popcorn and actually detracts from the message. Others become frustrated and tune out to what the enthusiast is trying to convey because of the off-topic manner in which they are saying it.
If you’re leading the meeting, try mightily to limit the amount of popcorn that takes you down rabbit holes or diverts you from the original business at hand. Utilize a “parking lot” to capture the topic for later, or firmly bring the group back to the agenda. And if you’re a meeting participant, be conscious of the time and place where you speak up. Save the popcorn for the movie theater.
Part of the reason we feel busy is because our calendars only reflect a small portion of the workload. I may feel that I have time for that one-hour meeting, but when it involves prep, travel, debriefing, and follow-up activities and I don’t schedule any of them onto my calendar is when things tend to get crowded.
We need to consider not only the time of the event itself but the adjacent commitments that it entails. I recently had a meeting downtown that ended at 1 pm. Since I had another meeting downtown at 3 pm, I decided to work from the library instead of traveling 20 minutes each way back and forth to home. My calendar showed 12-1 and 3-4 but my real commitment was 11:40 am – 4:20 pm. If I had declined the second meeting, I would have been away only from 11:40-1:20, giving me an afternoon of dedicated time at home.
With each “yes” you give, consider the opportunity cost of what you are inherently saying “no” to. What other commitments are implied when you hit “accept”? Do yourself a favor and schedule time for them on your calendar as well.
At a recent forum about arts and culture in our community, the director of the art museum referenced Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion, which states that a body moving at a constant speed in a straight line will keep moving at a constant speed in a straight line unless it is acted upon by a force. His point was that it is easy for organizations to become complacent and do things the way they have always done them. “We need to build capacity to overcome our own inertia,” he said.
It’s true not just for arts groups where the temptation is to offer the same type of events every year or to produce the annual fundraising gala. Individuals as well as other types of organizations fall into routines and become comfortable with doing things the way they have always done them. This leaves two choices to prevent demise: have the initiative and courage to create change within or respond to the environmental change that is imposed.
A few strategies that were raised in the arts forum as ways to be inertia-busting may be applicable to your organization:
Go beyond just promoting an event and actually invite people to attend it
Take programming out to other locations — if you go to them and provide a “small introduction to the large” they may be more willing to come to you later. Show up where you haven’t been
Create programs that look like the people you want to attract
Encourage people to participate at all levels of the organization, not just as audience members
Promote giving arts as a gift to expose people
Create meaningful engagement with people you have traditionally not had relationships with
Even if you have nothing to do with arts or culture, you are still subject to the same laws of organizational physics. You need to intentionally deploy strategies to alter your routine or you will be ruled by it. What can you do today to shake something up?
Every Friday, I rotate a basket of toys for my dogs. I have found that because of the perceived newness, they play with their toys much more than when the whole collection continuously remained in the basket. Now, each week they exhibit the same excitement as if the toys were fresh from the store instead of the holding box in the basement.
A similar pattern exists with my clothes. When I unpack for the next season, it’s like I have discovered a whole new wardrobe, full of treasures I had forgotten about. Rotating your clothes, even if not required by your closet or wardrobe size, is a good way to maximize your interest and the appeal of what you already own.
Think about other things that become stale just by their omnipresence. Do you have books that could add to your wintertime pleasure if you rearranged your shelves and “found” them? Maybe there are ingredients in the back of your pantry that you can bring to the front and then serve in a new recipe. Or perhaps you have assets in your office that could be put to better use if you rearranged your piles to bring that data report to the top.
Take some time to find the newness in what you already have, even if you have to rotate things to do so. The old adage states “out of sight, out of mind” but I think “always in sight, out of mind” applies as well.
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.
