Morgan McLintic on PR and Performance

14 years at LEWIS PR

Today I celebrate my fourteenth anniversary at my agency, LEWIS PR. Just wanted to say thanks to everyone I've worked with (clients, partners and colleagues) during that time. It's been fun.

You're making me sad

"You're making me sad," my son said accusingly last night as I refused him a cookie before dinnertime. With a three-year-old, it's easy to see that I had no intent to upset him, nor could I actually make him sad. And yet, in the workplace we often encounter similar situations - intents are misinterpreted and people get into a funk.

There are two lessons in here for each of us:

1. It's not about you - too often we interpret commercial decisions from a personal perspective. We project our own rationale on the reasons for a decision, and believe that the ramifications for us were intended. For instance, Jake didn't get a cookie and that must be because I don't want to give him what he wants. In the workplace, decisions are rarely made which deliberately cause harm or discomfort. Sometimes the implications simply weren't envisaged or there was a greater good in taking a particular course of action. We all get our toes trodden on sometimes - it's seldom deliberate. When this happens to you, take a moment to get past your emotional reaction and to put yourself in the decision-maker's shoes. Why might they have done this? Is it possible there is something at play you are not aware of? "Seek first to understand, then be understood," as Covey would say.

2. No-one can make you feel happy or sad - or anything in between. Only you have control over your emotions. That's right, you can select them, just like you might select a gear in a car. It's not easy mind you. In fact, some situations are so emotionally charged it's very difficult to exercise this control. With practice though you can choose the right emotional state to deal with a situation. For instance, some people get into a decline when the weather is bad. This is odd since they have no control over the weather and it really doesn't mean it. So instead of bringing your own personal raincloud into the office, you could opt to be cheerful. You could decide not to let the weather dictate what kind of day you want to have. At the other end of the spectrum, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl calls this the last of human freedoms - "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

I guess a third lesson might be that to keep a child happy, you just need a large supply of cookies. But that's probably not a great solution.

Five ways to fail a job interview

I've interviewed hundreds of job candidates. Going into an interview, I want the interviewee to get the job, to be 'the one'. But the law of averages says that's unlikely. Most candidates make the same mistakes:

They just want A job not, THIS job - Particularly in the current economic climate, candidates just want a position, any position. If you can't answer why you want to work for this company in this particular role, and are the best person to do that, save yourself the bother of applying. Contrary to what you may think, it's not a numbers game. You don't marry just anyone with a pulse, so don't apply to just any company with a payroll. As an employer, I want to know why you are the only person who can do the job.

They don't know what we do - You have to do your research into the company, its positioning, competitors, challenges, financials, recent news. For instance, in my sector, you have to know the difference between PR and advertising. I'm sure there are similar fundamentals in other areas which scream lack of research. It's hard to take a candidate seriously who hasn't put in a few hours getting the fundamentals down.

They mess up the basics - Turn up on time, wear a clean suit, bring an up-to-date resume which is free of typos, don't smell (e.g. of smoke or attack perfume), brush your hair, have clean shoes, don't wear too much make-up (especially guys!) or show too much cleavage (guys!!), don't sweat profusely, or in any way give a first impression which is not the one you intend. Your apparel and punctuality should not be noticeable. You should be what we notice.

They're dull - Companies want to hire fascinating, engaged and exciting people. The ones who ooze potential. So don't bore your interviewer with trivial accomplishments, bland perspectives, wrote answers or lengthy diatribes. Be different. I often ask myself - would I want to get trapped in an elevator with this person? If I can't imagine inviting them home for dinner or going to a bar with them, they're probably not the right fit. Keep your answers short, laugh your way through the interview, be yourself. This is supposed to be you at your sparkling best.

They exaggerate - During an interview the BS radar is on full alert and pointed directly at you. So just be honest. By all means, highlight your accomplishments but don't claim abilities which you don't possess. Honesty and humility are far more important than supposed superpowers. And don't forget, if you get the job, and your track record is a fabrication, we'll find out. Start the relationship on a solid foundation - in many ways it's better to underplay your role and then over deliver when you get the job.

In related topics here are the ten questions which interviewees never ask and a few pointers on how to get a job in PR. Companies are always looking to hire great people, so good luck!

The eight words managers should use most often

As a manager you'll have to deal with a wide variety of situations. Here are the words you should find yourself using most often:

Well done - give positive feedback often. Be generous with your praise, profligate even. In giving praise, be as specific as possible. 'Well done. Your presentation was well-designed, your delivery was engaging and you answered the questions concisely. I particularly liked the way you used your hand gestures to underline the three key points.' Everyone likes praise - it raises our self esteem and reinforces a positive image of ourselves. It also means your team knows you recognize their efforts and value them. You should wear out the words 'well done' - they never lose their value and you have an unlimited supply.

Please / thank you - just like your mother used to tell you. Imagine that your team are all volunteers. They could work anywhere (and they probably can). So ask politely when you want something done, and thank them when it's been delivered. Too many managers assume their team is there simply to do their bidding. Don't be one of them.

I am sorry - lots of things will go wrong when you are a manager. Many of them beyond your immediate control. It doesn't matter - you have to own them, sort them out and apologize. Many managers see it as a weakness to apologize. They never admit fault. The implication is that mistakes are everyone else's fault. This won't win friends or influence anyone. Instead, put your hand up and own the issue. Apologize quickly and move on. It'll cost you nothing and have a huge impact.

It may sound basic, but if you use these eight words frequently, you'll be amazed at the impact they will have on your team. Who knows, they may even say 'well done' back?

Do the things you hate

We hear a lot about following your passion. Doing what you love. And why would you do anything else if you want a satisfying and successful life?

At the career-level this is good advice. But within your role, at the day-to-day level, I'd argue that you should actively do the things you hate. Not all the time, but periodically you should deliberately take on a task which you find difficult and which makes you uncomfortable. This is because we spend far too long within our comfort zone. We repeatedly practice the tasks we are already good at. No doubt, it's good to improve on those tasks and to focus on the things which we alone can do. But to become rounded professionals we need a range of skills, and a weakness in one area can undermine excellence in another.

For instance, I don't particularly enjoy speaking at conferences. It's not that I'm afraid of public speaking since I do that a lot, but the organizer in me finds the lack of control stressful. But despite that, I've spoken at numerous conferences, been on panels, presented webinars and hosted our own events. Each time, I've found it invigorating and a good learning experience. It would be far easier to delegate this task or not to do it. But I deliberately do the thing I hate and as a result I am gradually getting better at it.

There are core skills which we all need as professionals - communication, management, financial, legal, operational, technical, strategic, organizational - and none of us are born with a full complement. We may have talent and a predilection for particular areas but the skills of the rounded professional are learned (and learnable). Deficiencies in one area can eliminate strengths in another. A great manager who is disorganized or a poor communicator will not succeed. A technical leader who can't grasp the financial implications will not meet her potential.

So while it's important to do what you love in your role, it's just as important to do what you hate in your tasks. It's the only way to get better. So resolve today to get out of your comfort zone and do something you really don't want to do. You may just find you are good at that too, and that it's not as bad as you envisaged.

Do the hardest thing first

What's the first thing you do when you sit down at your desk in the morning? If you are like most people, it's fire up your email and get to work on the priorities it dictates.

Tomorrow, I'd like to suggest you do something different. Before you open your email client (and let's face it, you probably scanned email when you woke up anyway, right?), look at your To Do list and do the most-important, most-complex and nastiest thing on there. Brian Tracy calls this Eating Your Frog, based on the Mark Twain saying "Eat a live frog every morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day." Steven Covey calls it doing First Things First.

Depending on the task, this will mean that by about 9.00am you will have nailed one of your Must Dos. You should have about 3-5 of these each day. And it'll have been the thorniest, most-urgent one. Probably one of the 20% which makes 80% of the difference. You'll feel a sense of accomplishment and start the day with forward momentum, while most others are still wading through email triage. It also means you are tackling the most-demanding issues when you have the most energy and focus. This yields better results compared to procrastinating and leaving all the tough issues to the end of day.

If you make a habit of this, you will a) make sure you check off all those important tasks which only you can do, b) do them better, c) start to break your email addiction and d) be in control of your Must Dos rather than acting on whatever seems to be on fire at the start of the day.

That's got to be better than tackling your Inbox.

Most of your decisions are wrong

We each make hundreds of decisions everyday. Some decisions are complex and based on detailed research, others are gut-feel, intuitive selections. Some are important with deep ramifications, while others are of little consequence.

Most of your decisions are wrong. The power law suggests that as many as 80% of them have little impact on your business, career or other goals. Only 20% of them make a difference.

The trouble is most of us don't like admitting our decisions are wrong or inconsequential. There's a perceived loss of status in having to admit we've changed our minds. Or that we bet on the wrong horse and things didn't turn out quite as we foresaw. But this way of thinking is wrong too. Our minds are not inflexible with decisions carved in stone. We can change our minds if we want. In fact, changing our mind is one of the easiest things we can do. Changing reality is far harder but will never happen until you change your mind first.

Equally no-one looks down on someone who changes tack. The world is a complex ecosystem which is inherently chaotic and unknowable. We all have a mental map which we believe will navigate us through but we must never forget the map is not the territory. Things will go wrong - it's how you react which is important.

Once you realize that most of the decisions you make will be wrong or irrelevant, then you can adapt the way you make decisions to compensate. It's better to make fast decisions than to procrastinate. The person who makes ten decisions in a day, will have two correct and meaningful ones. The rest won't matter. They'll out-compete the person who makes just a single decision each day and has to get a home-run each time.

If you know that many of your decisions are going to be wrong, then the feedback loop becomes more important. It's fine to make a wrong call, as long as you discover that quickly, adjust and change course. In acting on your decision, you get feedback data which helps you improve your decision-making. Sometimes you'll ace it, most of the time you'll need to correct. The faster you can get the feedback and adjust, long-term the better your performance will be.

The problem for people looking in from the outside is that this can appear as chaotic, or even inconsistent. Rapid adjustment and flexibility which is the result of fast feedback and many logical decisions, can be disorienting for those not involved in the process. It just looks like wavering. So the third discipline that the power law of decision making forces upon us is communication. It's important to explain why things are being changed when decisions are amended. Share the new data that you discovered and the implications. This will help the team to follow the journey with you, rather than being on the receiving end of conflicting directions.

If most of your decisions are wrong, then make them faster, find out which ones aren't working, adapt and explain why you are changing. Then you'll accelerate the speed of the entire team and exponentially increase your chances of success.

Most of what you do is pointless

In 1906, Italian sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto discovered that 80% of Italy's land was owned by 20% of its population. This Power Law, which later came to bear his name, is now a common rule of thumb in business. Most notably, it's believed that 80% of a company's profits come from 20% of its customers.

But how does this power law apply to us as individuals? The most obvious is that 80% of our productive output comes from 20% of our tasks. That's right, 80% of the time you spend at work, contributes to just 20% of your value. Thinking of this another way, in a standard 10-hour day starting at 8.00am, by 10.00am, just two hours in, you could already have delivered 80% of your value to the company. If you were to go home then, it wouldn't make a huge amount of difference.

This might come as a bit of a shock. I mean, we all bust a gut at work, but only 20% of the things we do really make a difference? Two of the ten things on our to-do list, are four times more valuable than all the others put together? Well yes, if Pareto's Law is correct, that's exactly what it means.

So what should we do about it? The most important thing is to be aware of this dynamic and to plan properly. Look at your role and daily tasks and get a feel for what the most valuable actions are. Management mogul, Peter Drucker advises us to 'Do what you and you alone can do.' That's where your true value lies. Not in the reporting, the meetings, the team management and all that other daily routine.

If you only did one thing for your company, the thing you do the best and enjoy the most - what would it be? Write it down. Now what's the next most important thing you bring to the company? Write that down too. And here you have your two things, your twenty percent. You might throw in a third, just to make sure you've captured the killer value you bring.

Now focus all your energy on those two or three key things. Do them again and again. Get better and better at them and you will exponentially increase your value to your company, and probably enjoy yourself a lot more at work.

The sad fact is most of us spend 80% of our time doing things we don't fully enjoy, and those are often the things which also deliver the least value to the companies we work for. Wouldn't it be better to focus on the most valuable and enjoyable tasks and do those all the time?

Video - Crisis management in social media

I wanted to share the full video (38:19) of our crisis management in social media webinar which we held earlier this month. This is a recording of the entire session, but we'll be running it live again in the near future if you'd like to jump in with questions.

My thanks once again to everyone who attended. Hope it's useful.

The role of brute force in project management

Sometimes the only way to get the lid off a jam jar is through brute force. Sure, you can hold it under hot water or use a cloth to get better purchase, but ultimately what it usually takes, is sheer strength. You've just got to grit your teeth and do it. Once it's open, it's far easier for the next person.

The same applies to project management. There are lots of sophisticated project management techniques which will 'loosen' the top of a tricky project. But sometimes it just takes brute force to get it going. Of course, for most of us at work, brute force doesn't mean physical strength. It means focus, determination and self-discipline. Most projects get to a point where the 'donkey work' just needs to happen and someone needs to push through it. This may not be high-level but it is essential. And make no mistake, it's hard. It requires hours of detailed activity in implementing the plan.

This is where many projects falter. No-one has the strength to open the jam jar. To knuckle down and make it happen. Lots of people can suggest running it under the tap, using pliers, finding a tea towel. But they just can't get the damn thing open themselves.

No-one is born with an innate ability to focus and power through tasks, just as we're not born with vice-like grips. It needs to be learned, and the muscles of focus need regular exercise for them to grow.

It may not be glamorous but brute force can be instrumental to a project's success. It's worth building up those focus muscles, you never know when someone might hand you the jam jar project no-one else can open.

(And once it's open, everyone will say they loosened it for you, but you'll know the truth...)