As a Minnesota resident, I often find myself dreaming of warm climates this time of year.
The temperature hovers around freezing and I can picture the arid deserts of Arizona or the lush rainforests of Hawaii. Both climates offer respite from the Minnesota winter, but they are decidedly different from one another in flora and fauna.
A cactus can’t survive in the rainforest, and ferns can’t grow in the desert.
Human beings are hard-wired to crave recognition.
When we know that others are seeing us in a positive light, our brains release a few chemicals into our systems that make us feel good both physically and emotionally. This feeling encourages us to engage or move towards the source that triggered it.
In short, we move closer because we want more of that feeling.
I recently had a slightly humorous, but nonetheless, very forceful reminder of the power of repetition when communicating with your team.
In the world of EOS®, we subscribe to the premise that you have to say something seven times to be truly heard.
Two workers in the Operations Department of a company were working one Friday evening to push out a late delivery. One saw a problem about to happen and said to the other, “Look at that! We can’t ship this out. This order is not correct.”
“You’re right,” said the other, “But neither one of us can fix it. Nobody can fix it until Monday. The boss told us to get this shipment out tonight, and we’ll get yelled at if we don’t. Remember what he did the last time something like this happened?”
So out the order went, and in came an angry customer complaint two days later when the order was delivered. And then out went a chunk of the profits from the order because it cost the company three times as much to fix the error than it would have to get it right the first time.
A common frustration of many business owners is how difficult it is to find and keep “good people”. Conversely, “bad people”, those who regularly commit one or all of the Seven Deadly Sins, seem to abound. Even when “good people” are hired, it’s only a matter of time before they somehow mysteriously turn out to be “bad people”. The lament is often “they interviewed so well, but …”
