No Reply at All - Part One

Recently a client sent an email to one of his long-time business acquaintances suggesting we all meet so the acquaintance and I could learn more about one another's services and how we might help each other's clients. The acquaintance made no reply.

I emailed and called the acquaintance, who I know in passing through a referral organization we both are members of to ask that we sit for coffee sometime and break the ice more formally. After all three contacts, he made no reply. My client said that's the way he is with everyone and that I should keep calling. So, my choices are to chase or move on. In this case, I choose to move on.

I called three other members of the referral organization inviting them to coffee so that we might learn about one another, and be able to refer each other with real confidence. None of them replied.

What is it in our business norms that makes such behavior so common?

Surely, I do not know why the calls were not returned. When I see these people I'll ask them. I am absolutely certain there is some explanation: I was so busy that week. I did not get the message (even though they were all relayed through a front office staff member). I have not had time to call (even though there are many more minutes in a day than are used). There is always an explanation.

The simple between-the-eyes point is this: not returning a phone call is bad form. Shame on you if you're taking this approach. Truly, shame on all of us when we don’t extend courtesy to courtesy.

We are all busy. I don’t know anyone who isn’t. I bet if you removed from our daily conversations all sentences used to say how busy we are there would be a lot of mostly silent people walking around - and cell phone use would plummet. Unless we want to act like kids who use excuses to avoid accountability, we must do better.

Too busy? Have the person who took the message return the call explaining the person I called will call later in the month, or simply cannot give the invitation any priority right now. Out of town? Make sure your secretary, email and voicemail messages say so. Not interested? Have the courage to call back and say it is not something you'd invest time in now. I would give high marks for showing up maturely, at least.

Consider what contributions these people have made to their reputations. How likely am I to refer anyone to them now? I certainly would not risk damaging my relationship with someone I trust and work with by sending them to talk with someone who is known for ignoring inquiries. And I refuse to reward behavior that helps keep business cold, distant and mechanistic.

No reply is a reply - for sure. The smart businessperson thinks about what meaning that no-reply may come to have for the person who was not replied to. The smart, if not evolved, thing to do is show up bigger than that. Don't you think?

Consider this: In all situations that involve other people - the ones that you're pulled into by things like phone messages and unsolicited invitations, and the ones you invite yourself into - are you enhancing the relationship or doing damage? Are you enhancing your reputation or undermining it? Are you showing up as the best you or something less? (Maybe this guy's No Reply is his best - who knows.) Do you show respect, or are you self-centered? What values are you demonstrating?

As a business professional, I think it's possible to say no thank you and enrich the relationship simultaneously, if we have the courage to try. What do you think?

Congratulations - It's a BOY !

A deep and warm congratulations to my client, Hank Morton, creator and president of Baja Bound Mexican Insurance Services on the birth of his first child.

Quite a special site...see for yourself. Maybe you recall your first child, or imagine how wondrous and weighty it must feel to shepherd a life into the world.

I'm in awe...

www.hankandandrea.com/seth/seth.php
The company little Seth will inherit currently looks like this: www.BajaBound.com

A BIG Bunch of Georges

Have you kept up with how the Tour de France is unfolding this year? It's amazing that Lance Armstrong is on track to win a seventh consecutive Tour. That has never been done before. But I'm a little scared.

What am I scared about? That the fame machine will turn the story into one almost entirely about Lance, when there is simply no way he could win without an equally exceptional team around him. But maybe I don't have anything to worry about.

For the first time in his six previous victories that a teammate won one of the 20 or so stages of the Tour. George Hincapie won Sunday's race. Lance was seventh.

George is one of the guys whose primary job it is to plow the way forward for the team leader. In every race prior to Sundays, George would have been passed by his team leader, Lance Armstrong, some distance before the finish line so the stage victory could go to his teammate. I like that.

Why? Because it typifies the role most team players have. Most of us are not Barry Bonds (baseball), Lance Armstrong (cycling), Peyton Manning (football), Wayne Gretsky (hockey), Michael Jordan (basketball). No, most of us are the guys who plow the way for the more high-profile people to score, or at least make the play that will cover the newspaper sports section tomorrow. Most of us are not Lance Armstrongs. Most of us are George Hincapies.

I like that idea. Promise yourself you'll remember that when, if all goes as is predicted, six days from now all the news has just one name in it, Lance Armstrong.

The man sure is talented. He certainly has the right combination of skill, poise and work ethic. And none of that would amount to a hill of trophies if it were not for a big bunch of Georges each year.

Three cheers for what's-his-names...er...George!

Hip Hip Hooray!
Hip Hip Hooray!
Hip Hip Hooray!

Community is a Great Antidote

I have been mulling over an idea since the attacks in London last week.

I have been slow to share my thoughts about how terrorism affects us because it could be misconstrued for band-wagon-jumping. There is the added difficulty of writing about the bombings without evoking such images of the incidents in your minds that I lose your attention, or contribute to your suffering. Alas, in any attempt to share ideas not everything can be controlled. Sometimes all I need to know is the intention is good - and then I can listen openly. So, with that 'round-the-houses preamble, here is my idea:

The antidote to terrorism is community.

It is a simple idea. In the dozen or so conversations I have had about this, no one has objected. A few have said the antidote to terrorism is education. True enough. But, that idea takes me into a realm where I feel powerless. What can I do to educate people who perpetrate terror? Besides, I am not talking about changing terrorists. That is way beyond my ability to create something powerful. Plus, that angle is about getting someone else to change, and I am not about that. No; I am talking about how terrorism can change me – and perhaps you – for the good. I’m talking about rising out of adversity, strong and connected. I am talking about making the life you lead, in your small sphere of influence better, in spite of – or even as a result of – this horrible event.

I have friends in the UK, a couple of them still in London. The others have long ago ended London-living to claim a verdant patch of quiet ground “in the country.” Thankfully they are all safe.

I spent the initial few minutes after the news broke fact-gathering. What happened? Where did it happen? Is there more to come? Where is everyone I know? Are they okay?

As soon as my attention turned to the last two questions, where are my friends and are they safe, I immediately felt better. Naturally, there was a small chance someone I love was hurt. As soon as I learned they were safe, I felt closer to them. It was as if I could feel us literally near one another. It felt good, like a bear hug. Then I began to wonder, this feeling of connection that has me immediately feeling stronger, might this be the antidote to terrorism?

I emailed and talked with my friends a few days after the bombings. Mostly we cut each other up the way we do. We spent almost no time talking about what happened, who was responsible or even who was where when it did. We invested much of our time talking together about what is happening in our lives. There was a bit about the bombers’ values being counter to our own, as if that needed saying. We talked about how we missed each other. We talked about the shop. We talked about a new job. We talked about a son. We talked about getting my room ready for when I visit during the Olympics. We remembered how much we enjoyed Christmas ’03 – hanging out and talking for hours at the pub. We remembered staying out until four a.m. on New Year’s Eve and wanting to sleep until Easter to make up for it. Yeah, we remembered the silly stuff – the stuff that glues our hearts together.

Had I been in England, we surely would have gotten together. We would have poked fun at each other and sipped beer and reminisced about all the other times we poked fun, plotted our weekends together and sipped beer at a pub someplace. Without literally saying what we value most in one another, we would have said it with belly laughs, deep listening and easily springing off each other’s ideas to the next one, until our appetites for each other were temporarily sated. In any case, even via phone, we left our exchanges edified when someone somewhere had intended we would be weakened.

I do not imagine the people who detonate bombs think much about me and my friends. I do not imagine they think they are harming their cause by killing people. I think the outcome they cannot imagine, perhaps the one if imagined would drive them mad, is the one that will ultimately make their strategy useless; we came together, renewed our bonds, reminded each other of what is important and empowered each other to keep going. Our circle, our community is now stronger.

Yeah, in the lives of ordinary people, I think the response to the pain terrorists inflict will be their undoing. Not in a flashy political way. Rather in an everyday-lives sort of way. This sort of victory is quiet, imperceptible to an outside eye, and deep.

What happened in London was terrible. And, my friends and I discovered an upside quite unintended; we are in a stronger web, a stronger community, together. And we are enlivened by that.

Lifelong Toleration Handled

Hello frequent readers! Hello first time visitors! I say hello to you during a perfectly sane hour - well, almost. It's 9:45 p.m. and I'm jotting this for you minutes before I indulge my lower brain in half an hour of pulp television, reality TV style. (Actually, it may be pulp TV, but I watch it with a social scientist's eye, looking for how the people are communicating, handling stress, concocting silly realities and - just how much they can eat and drink before creating some new eye-rolling moment.)

Have any of you noticed I've been posting less frequently lately? Want to know why? Simple: I finally, FINALLY(!) handled one of the all-my-adult-life tolerations...insomnia.

Now, if you know anything about me from direct experience or by proxy reading the content of this site, you know I'm a thinka. Yep, I think a LOT. That's all well and good during daylight hours, but it positively ROTS during the wee hours after midnight.

After many years of sleepless nights I finally went to see el doctor and asked for some help. "Help" was a euphemism, of course. What I really wanted was a prescription - something that would help me sleep. My only stipulations was that it not be physiologically addictive, as many prescription sleep aids are. Happy as a sleeping dog, I can report to you I now have a way to make it through a night without waking up six times and reading (or posting my BLOG entries) for three hours.

So, this is one big apology to you all and one big admission from me - sometimes I forget to practice what I preach!

I had been tolerating insomnia for years. Telling the flagrant truth - I had actually been getting a bit of a kick out of suffering it, especially when I realized how much writing I could produce while bleary eyed - some of it quite good, if I do brag so myself.

Alas, I have now put my sleep aid where my mouth is and eliminated something that had been dragging me down for DECADES! May I offer this pair of lessons to you:

Sometimes the "coach" is a lousy student - until he finally "gets it" himself - AND -while I may be less productive at insane hours now that my insomniatic suffering has ended, I am more happily productive during the day.

Yeah, there's that annoying word: Happy. Sorry to bug you with the notion that we should be happy in our lives as often as possible. Seems we adults are too proud of what we can endure. More often than not, those things that we're just putting up with day in and day out, year in and year out are keeping us from being truly happy. Silly. Because, JOY is the ultimate mental state for TOP performance and CREATIVITY. JOY, Happiness! Pity so few execs are acquainted with this truth.

Remember that - and get to work eliminating the nagging and hassling, weighing-you-down-like-a-horse-shoe-necklace things that you're putting up with. HANDLE YOUR HASSLES! TACKLE YOUR TOLERATIONS in all areas in which we have authority and responsibility. Let's GET TO WORK! (Pssst! I can help you with that.)

This message was brought to you by the soon-to-be-sleeping Coach, David Fazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Happy Interdependence

I love this holiday – this festive, secular celebration of the great ideas and determined actions that coalesced into the creation of a terrific nation. I do. I love this holiday.

From my balcony I enjoy five or six fireworks displays, from downtown San Diego to the south to Sea World to the northwest. My holiday festivities are provided in large part by other people.

And so it is for many, many of our blessings. They are provided in large part by other people, many of whom we will never know. We are connected; there is no getting around it. The nectarine I ate this morning with sunflower seeds and plain vanilla yogurt was planted, tended and harvested by strangers, so that I might enjoy it one summer morning. The paper I read today was written, printed and distributed by several of my city neighbors, plus reporters half the world away. This computer, the t-shirt I’m wearing, the Jeep I relish, my memories of family vacations long past – all the many pieces of which were provided by many, many other people, many-o-many of which I will never meet. Yet we are all participating together.

This American holiday, Independence Day – is a limited, and forgive my boldness, an outdated, notion. Sure, let’s celebrate the ideas and ideals upon which our nation was founded, and which we slip, claw and climb to make real in our own lives each and every ordinary day. That is worthy of celebration.

Now, in great American style, let’s go further. Let’s all of us see that none of what we enjoy in our lives and none of what we suffer is enjoyed or suffered independently, for it is impossible for any one of us to survive independent of one another.

The term, independence, is too-much elevated, I believe, in our culture’s psychology. There is too much talk of going it alone. It is actually nearly impossible to do. And beware: Too much independence leads to separation. We should guard against that. Let’s have just enough independence to fulfill our individual promises, and not merely the promises someone else wants us to fulfill, while not too much independence to believe for an instant that we achieve anything alone.

My business is not succeeding because of only what I do. No. My father and sister and clients and friends and suppliers of myriad tools and resources help me succeed. Your success within your business is because of the people in it and all the people who serve you from outside your business – and because of the people you serve, your customers. You succeed because of your customers. We do not – we cannot succeed independently. We may break away independently, yet we can only succeed over time in communion, in community, in teams with many, many other people.

Remember that. What may begin as an act of independence quickly and irrevocably becomes an extended process of interdependence. You depend on me. I serve you. I depend on you. You serve me. We are interdependent. I’m glad for that. May we continue to serve each other and every one else supremely well. Happy Interdependence.