Hi, and welcome to another Thoughts on Leadership.  I have entitled this one ‘Faulty Reasoning – the Slippery Slope’.  There are many reasons why you can have faulty reasoning.  But this particular one that we are going to focus is about a type of reasoning that people can have.  It is so subtle, so slight, that you don’t realize it., particularly because it doesn’t always have an immediate impact on you, and so it slides away from you.

Let me try to give you an example without trying to pick on anybody in particular.  Let’s take for instance, a smoker.  A smoker will reason that this one cigarette won’t kill.   And the truth is that ‘one’ won’t kill them.  Maybe a person is eating fatty foods; they will reason; well this packet of chips won’t affect me, or this burger is not going to kill me, and they are right that ‘one’ will not kill them.   However, the compounded effect of continuously doing such actions could ultimately kill them.  So we are not talking about the one bit of judgment, which is about a specific instance.  It is about that judgment re-occurring on a long-term basis.

If we look at another example; say that you are somebody who is very careful about the way you drive.   One day just about the time you were due to leave the office you get a phone call from your partner “Please get home little Johnny’s had an accident, can you get back as quickly as possible”.  Now you are worried, you are a bit uptight.  You get into the drivers seat and you drive faster than you do normally.  You say to yourself;  ‘Yeah, I know I shouldn’t be driving this fast but I’m in a hurry, it’s extenuating circumstances’, and you drive a little bit faster.  You get home, Johnny, as it happens is OK, everything is fine.  The next day you are getting into the car and you think, ‘You know something I went a little bit faster yesterday and it was OK.  Maybe I can just drive a little bit faster, not as fast as yesterday but a bit faster than I did the day before’.  And so then you find yourself going faster, and then you find yourself saying; ‘Well I could go a little faster than this but still not as fast as I did that day’. The individual judgments are not wrong necessarily, but collectively they start to compound and take you in a specific direction.

We can do this in the workplace.  We get angry with somebody, and justifiably angry.  Let’s not pretend, we do sometimes; there is a reason to get angry with people.  But then you go well, guess what, the person reacted the way I wanted them to.  Maybe I should react the same way next time, and it made me feel good!  So you take each instance and start saying, ‘well that justifies doing it again, and again, and again’. And so we develop faulty reasoning because we are actually collecting evidence, which is saying; ‘Hey! this is OK, it’s all right’. OK, I smoked that cigarette, and I didn’t die.  I had that burger, I didn’t die.  I drove that little bit faster, I didn’t die.  I shouted at that person, and nothing happened in the business that was negative.  So we can very quickly get into this reasoning, which justifies what is actually ‘false reasoning’.  It’s embedded our false position.

So my questions for you this month:

• Are there any areas that I am falling into this trap?
• What I am asking you to do is to be very objective and take a big step back from yourself and say:  What areas, if any, have I developed this creeping faulty reasoning?
• Reflect back on some of your previous ways of dealing with things, and ask: Why am I no longer dealing with them in that way?

Now there will be times when you are not dealing with them that way because there is a justifiable reason to change.  And those are not the times I am talking about.  I am talking about the times when you don’t realise that you have changed, or you may subconsciously realise it, but not really acknowledge it to yourself because you have been justifying as you have been going along.

Here some more questions for you to consider:

• What areas am I allowing this creeping change to happen in me?
• How am I noticing it in others?

It can very quickly happen to others on your team.  If you don’t point it out to them then they are not necessarily going to know it is even happening.  So just a very subtle but very important aspect I am asking you to look at this month.  Consider it in yourself, consider it in others, and find out ‘Am I on that slippery slope because of some faulty reason’, and you have allowed yourself to take this downward spiral.

I hope that has been useful for you this month.

I hope you are having a great time and I look forward to seeing you again next month.

Thanks

Bye for now.

Paul

P.S. – We have some very exciting new projects on the horizon, so please keep reading and we will update you on the new stuff coming soon.

Hi and welcome to another thoughts on leadership. I’m still surprised at how many organizations I go to where things are going wrong in the organization and the people at the top are the last to find out.  There’s a mistake being made, there’s a problem with a customer.  There’s an issues over here.  People are aware that something’s going wrong down the line.  We’ve got this BP Oil crisis, and people knew that there were issues there and yet nobody spoke out.  This is going on all the time and it’s just not good enough. So I’m not in any way going to apologize for being quite blunt this month about what I see as something that needs to be worked at.  In your organization if there is an issue there, if there’s a problem somewhere, does the information come up to you?  Have you got people in your organizations that are running around hiding issues from management?  Weather it be their immediate line management or weather it is the top managers in the organization.  Do people feel confident enough to be able to come to their manager and say, I think there’s an issue here? I think we have a potential problem here.   Here’s the real issue! Does your manager listen?  Will your manager take it and understand it and give it the value that is necessary?  Or is it going to be “you’re just a worrier”, “you’re just negative”, or “you’re just thinking of the worst”; and then we get the BP crisis.  So what is happening in your organization?  How are you building the culture of your organization to allow people to come up and speak their mind and express their concerns, and tell you there’s a problem with a customer?  Can that information get through to people so that they know about it in time for them to be able to deal with it.  Or do you’re senior management find out about it when its just too late.

So this month I’m going to ask you to really think about this in a big way.  And these are the questions I’m going to put to you.

• Does the culture in your organization encourage communication from the bottom up?

So much about oh yea our communication is great and all the rest of it, if that’s communication going down, then you’re not measuring the right communication.  It’s about what comes up as much as what comes down.

• Does every department have a way of being heard?

I’ll say that again, does every department in the organizations have a means by which they’re heard at the level that is necessary?

• How do people know that they have been heard?

You know people can say, “hey we’ve got a problem here”, they get no feedback to say, “ok yes, thank you, we’re dealing with it” or anything like that.  And if they think its fallen on deaf ears, that becomes and inhibitor for them speaking up next time.  So how do they know that they’ve been heard?  How do you reward that openness?  Do people get some sort or award?  And I’m not talking about a financial reward, just a thank you, ask for their suggestions about how to deal with it, anything like that makes people feel that they’re being valued and heard.  And how do you respond when it is bad news?  Are you the type of manager, or are any of your managers in your organization the type of manager that when bad news comes they go into a rage.  Recently I heard somebody who was saying they didn’t dare tell the manager anything because he’d get angry, so they used to leave him information and then run for the hills.  It would be given to him at home time everyday, when everybody could get out of the office, because by the morning he would have gotten over his temper.  If that’s going on in your organization then you have a problem.

So the communication in your organization, listen to this very carefully; the communication in your organization is only as good as all of your managers are in two areas:

1. How good are they at listening,
2. How good are they at responding.

Now here is the important part are all of your managers good at these two points?  If one manager is letting you down, then let me tell you, it’s affecting you as a group.  So think about everybody in your organization.  Do all of your managers understand?  Do they really appreciate the importance of these two things?  These two points define the culture of your organization and the communication up and down your organization.

I hope this month these questions have really got you thinking about the communication in your business, but in particular about this question of how fast is bad news traveling through your organization?  Is it getting to the right place quick enough so that you can deal with it, or is it getting to you so late that its virtually impossible to deal with.

I hope this has been helpful; until next month.  Bye for now.

Recessions Not Over Until the Lessons Are Learnt

Welcome to another thoughts on leadership. This month I want to talk to you about this economic turmoil that we’ve been through. However, many will say that we are heading for a double dip. And before we go any further, this months thoughts on leadership is going to be a good question for you to think about. And it is this; the recession is not over until we have learned the lessons.

Have you learned the lessons? There are a couple of lessons that I am talking about here. First of all, how did you go about dealing with the situation when you knew that the recession was starting? A lot of people did ‘knee jerk stuff’. A lot of people immediately went into slashing and cutting and all the rest of it. I am not saying those are the wrong things to do but I’m saying that there is a balance you need and I will come back to that.

Also, as you developed through the recession, what have you done? What are the mistakes you have made? And have you taken the time now to learn from those mistakes?

There is no point in going through all of this if we don’t take time to reflect and identify, what did we learn? What would we do differently? And if there was another recession, or if this is going to be a double dip, what would we do next time?

So, reflect from the beginning on the way you, your management team, the people around you, reacted and started to think about.

Think about the decision making process you went through. Think about your approach to the whole thing. Was it very defensive? Was it very baton down the hatches and lets just see if we can survive? In other words go into a survival mode? Or, did you balance it correctly?

So yes, we have to baton down the hatches. Yes, we may have to make cuts. And the recession is a great time; as I have said many many times over the last couple of years, it is a great time to get rid of some of those projects that you have been playing around with that were not in line with your business. But think about how you went through the decision making process of dealing with that.

Did you handle it well? Could you have handled it better? Did you balance the cutting back, with planning, and how you were going to deal with things going forward?

Let me give you an example of what I mean. A lot of organizations went about firing, reducing the head count, getting rid of what they thought was excess people. But the way they went about it, has meant that those that remain in the business are very unnerved by the approach that the organization took. So they are now sat there going ‘hold on a minute’. ‘I have to sit with this company because I don’t want to loose my job, I can’t afford to loose my job’.

But you know something? Now coming out of it they are starting to say, ‘this is not a very good place to work, if we go back into another recession, maybe I’m going to be on the chopping block’. ‘I want to work for a company that values me’.

So how did you go about cutting back? Did you involve people in some of the cutting back that needed to take place. I am not only talking about jobs, I am talking about some of the procedures and processes and things that you had to stop doing. Did you involve people in these discussions? Did you get their ideas? As a lot of the savings you can make in your organization, will come from your people. The more you are involved in that process, the more they will feel this is a great place to be and genuinely work at coming through it. However, more importantly, when we come out of it, then they will commit to the organization.

Just go back to that early stage and think about it. In addition, think about how you have dealt with some of the problems through the process. Were you slow in your decision making? Did you take too long, or were you more decisive? These are important things, you need to reflect, and learn. Were there some members of your management team who were better than others? What can you learn from that whole process?

So this months questions are:
Have you evaluated your own performance, you as the leader and your organization. How did you deal with the planning for the recession and how did you go about doing it? What would you do differently? If you were able to relive this whole thing again, go back in time and relive it, what would you have done differently? More importantly, heaven forbid, but if we are running into another recession, then what are you going to do this time? You don’t want to waste that opportunity as well, but you also want to rise to it. Bear in mind that some of the greatest businesses have started in recessions. More ideas, more businesses, have been generated coming out of a recession, coming out of difficult times, than out of easy times. So, what are you going to do? How are you going to gear your organization going forward if there was another recession?

One of the great things you can do is go back and learn the lessons from the last couple of years.

Have a great month and see you next month.

Paul

Reflection of Yourself

There’s an old expression that says what you don’t like in others, is what you see in yourself.  In other words, it’s a reflection on you what you don’t like.  People react quite negatively to this rubbish, just because I don’t like child abuse doesn’t mean that I’m a child abuser and don’t like myself for it.  And they react like this, but just before we get like that lets just look at the situation.

What are we talking about here?  Look at smokers; lets take smokers for an example.  I’m an ex-smoker so I can comment on this without being bad.  Smokers, the worst ones who don’t like people smoking are ex-smokers.  So when you see something in others and you could have a reaction to it, because it had some sort of effect on you in the past.  Maybe it was something that you did, or maybe something that you are.  So it may not apply to now, maybe when you were younger you were like that.  Because lets face it, when you don’t like something, the majority of the time you don’t like it you just, I don’t like it.  Don’t allow it to bother you.  So what is it that allows you to be bothered by certain things but not by others?  Say on the road, every once in a while somebody goes shooting past and the person goes Uhhhg and they get angry with them.  Is it because when they were younger they were like that and now they’re not; they resent it, they miss it.  Are you getting my drift?

So what I’m asking you here is what are those things that are annoying you about other people, that maybe its time to look in the mirror.  Maybe it’s a reflection of yourself that’s the problem here.  Maybe it’s not the person at all.  Ok, and even if they are doing it wrong, or something that you aren’t very happy with; getting angry, getting upset, and allowing it to effect you is not going to solve the issue.

So what I’m thinking of, is think about your relationships; weather it be work relationships, or home relationships, or friendships or whatever.  Think about what are these things that are bugging you, what are these things that are annoying you.  And ask yourself, why is this bugging me, why is it annoying me.  Because it may be that it’s a reflection of yourself.  Maybe it’s a habit that you’ve just gotten in to about being annoyed by it.  A lot of people get upset about things, and the time comes when they think about why they are upset.  Where did it all start?  Where did it all come from?

So this month, this time, I’m wanting you to really answer this question for yourself.  Look around you; think about the things in your life that are upsetting you, that are annoying you, that are getting you wound up.  I see it a lot with parents; they get wound up about their kids.  Actually what it is, is it that they are jealous that they couldn’t do that when they were kids; or they know that they behaved like that now I don’t like the idea of my kids behaving like that.  So again it’s all about a reflection of yourself.  So really think about this over the course of the next few weeks.  Consider your time ahead and say ok what are the things that are currently bothering me?  What are the things that are really getting to me?  What are the things that are upsetting me?  And basically what I’m saying is, do you need to get upset anymore?  Because if all the problem is that you’re getting upset and there is nothing else there, then maybe its time to put things behind you.  Maybe its time to look in the mirror and accept who you are, and move away from that.

So, a bit of a thoughtful topic for this particular thoughts on leadership.  I hope that you are having a great year.  I hope things are going well for you and that you’re keeping busy.  And I hope your relationships are growing and developing in a world where relationships are more and more important than ever.  Have a great time in the weeks ahead, and Ill speak to you again soon.  Bye now.

Knowledge is Power

Hi and welcome to another thoughts on leadership.  This one is entitled “Knowledge is Power, a Killer of Your Business.”  Yes, I’m still finding in organizations the attitude that knowledge is power, and it doesn’t matter if it’s from the top of the organization or somewhere down.  I’ll tell you where it most commonly is; it’s among those who are the least effective in your organization.  There’s a thought for you!  Look around some of your managers.  Look at yourself in the mirror.  Think about that point.  Are you the person who thinks knowledge is power?  I need to know; if I know something they don’t know that makes me more powerful than everybody else?  Hey, do you know something?  That can be a killer in an organization.   Think about the effect that has on other people.  How it demoralizes them.  How it under rates them.  How it keeps them in a position where they’re never sure what they’re doing.  And of course, for the person that does it it’s a safety net!  Because if everything goes wrong its ‘well you see’, and they use it to defend themselves.  So it’s not a good situation to have in an organization.

There’s no such thing as knowledge is power.  The RELEASE of knowledge is power.  Those people who really understand the value in good communication, and releasing as much information as possible to release to people, and how powerful that is in terms of the way that it engages people and makes people work more effectively together, the better the organization is.  It’s as simple as that.  So think about, I’m asking you to consider this in your organization.  Think about what’s going on in your business.  Look around, particularly if you have managers in your business who behave like that.  Those are the ones that you really need to be paying attention to.  Because underneath them is a group of people who are not being as effective as they could be.  But don’t do it until you’ve looked in the mirror.  Ask yourself the question am I somebody who values knowledge that much that I think that it makes me powerful to know something everybody else doesn’t know?  It doesn’t work like that anymore.  And it’s a danger sign to yourself; if that’s the way things are operating.  So, this month, start with yourself.

The questions are:

• What am I like, am I somebody who’s got the mental attitude which is tell people as much as possible, don’t hide things?
• Or am I somebody who is being an example of this and others are following my lead?
• Look around your managers; the leaders in your organization,
  • how good are they?
  • Have they got that approach and they’ve got that attitude?
  • Are they willing to share and talk about things?
  • Is there somebody in there you can see that has this attitude knowledge is power?
  • What are you going to do with it?
• Do you have any of your people with that attitude?  Do you have this person over here who’s trying to operate, and operates under that sort of approach in doing their work and dealing with their colleagues?  If so, how are you going to deal with it?

Because leaving it is not an option.  It breaks down relationships; it undermines the culture of your organization.  It just doesn’t do you any good.  So I hope this has really challenged you to think a little bit about it, in terms of knowledge in your organization and where peoples thoughts and thinking are in that approach.  And I hope it helps you look at ways of improving your business.

Have a great few weeks ahead and Ill see you again next time.  Thanks.  Bye for now.

In December of 2009 I went to a number of conferences where I heard people say; “Oh I’ll be glad when this year is over and we can start afresh next year”.  Hey, what is this?  Is there a reset button on life?  Life is a continuum.  It isn’t a day where you can cut this bit and then just go back and restart. You want change? What are you doing about it?  You won’t get change in your organization unless you are prepared to change.  I read a report recently that said that 50% of directors interviewed say that they “felt that their organization had not reacted well to the financial downturn”.  A lot of organizations went into reaction mode, a lot of them stayed in reaction mode.  A lot of them have not looked forward and said, “well what will the world be like after this?” They are not conceiving the idea of reinventing themselves or asking where they are adding value.

The board level of an organization, how are you changing?  What are you doing about change? If you, at that level, aren’t prepared to adapt and change and think differently, don’t expect everybody at the lower level to start reacting and changing and doing things differently.  It’s just not going to happen.  Have a good deep look at your board; at the management that you’ve got and say “is this the management that can take us to the next level?” “Is this the group of people that are going to take us through this, on to where we are going in the next five years?”  There are a lot people you may find that were absolutely great at one stage, but they are not the right people to take the business to the next level.  Are you making best use of your non-executive directors?  I hold a couple of non-exec positions.  Ask your non-exec what value are you bringing to the table now?  Maybe they did when they first started, and maybe their value has now finished.  Maybe it’s time for them to move on and maybe it’s time for you to get fresh blood in.  So think about within your organization and look at yourself and say, “if I’m asking for change, how am I changing?  What do I need to do?  How do I need to change in order to elicit change?”  See it’s the laws of physics; you’re not going to get a different reaction by doing the same thing.  If you are going to continue doing the same thing, you’re going to get the same result.  You can’t do this and expect something different to happen.  So what do you need to do differently?  How do you need to look at things differently to take things to the next level in your organization and ramp up your game?  And it will start with you.  Be brutally honest with yourself, and say “if I was starting this business now, would this team be the right team?”  And look at it from the top down, not from the bottom up in your organization.

I hope 2010 is being a great year for you.  I hope exciting things are going to be happening for you through this year.  I hope you’re going to have a really great time.  I look forward to being in touch with you through the course of this year.  Have a great time and thanks for listening.

Paul

Are You Healthy?

‘Picture this scene, a man is lying on the floor, he’s obviously over weight, a doctor is stooped over him. The doctor is pushing on the mans chest. He stops momentarily to open the eyelids and have a look at the size of the pupils. He continues to press, gets a stethoscope out, puts it to the man’s chest, hoping to hear for a heartbeat’.

Hi, my name is Paul Bridle and this month’s ‘Thoughts on Leadership is, ‘Are you healthy’? Do you realize that over 80% of fatal heart attacks could have been avoided with just a little bit of knowledge in advance. Just knowing a little bit more about what’s going on with your own body and being able to avert the risks in advance.

You see, we look at risk and risk analysis, and compliance and go ‘oh no!’ it’s just holding us back, it’s the worst thing possible. When in reality risk analysis and compliance is like exercise and good eating. It’s there to contribute to the life, not take from the life. And that is a mental attitude.

• What’s the mental attitude in your organization?
• What’s the attitude towards health in your business?

And that’s this months question for you.

Think about your own organization. You see the health of your organization starts from the head. What’s in the mind? What is the mindset of senior management, and management at every level of the organization? If they see it as something that’s holding back the organization, if they see it as something negative, then they are constantly looking at ways of finding; ‘How can we get around it?’ ‘How can we avoid it?’ And so on. This whole economic crisis that we’ve had in recent times is an example of people just throwing risk to the wind, don’t worry about all the analysis and everything else. Lets just go for it, then finding that ‘hey, its not really the way it should be’.

So this month I’m asking you to consider these questions.

• What is the intent within your organization?
• Is the intent to achieve success despite the risk?
• Are the senior managers at every level prepared to take the necessary analysis and be an example to their people of the importance of good analysis?
• Are they an example of the behaviors you want?

You see I use the word intent, because what is the overall intent of your organization here? If it is success at all cost and to hell with the rest, well you know something it may or it may not fail and you live with the consequences. Like the man that we were talking about, overweight on the floor, dying of a heart attack. But if you really want a robust long-term organization that can achieve things then it requires the balance to be taking place. It’s this constant keeping the balance on both sides.

• So what’s it like in your organization?
• More importantly, are you an example of what it should be?
• Do you take it seriously?
• Do you keep that balance in mind?

So it’s innovation? Yes. But its also risk analysis to balance it. It’s driving enthusiasm? Yes. But its also making sure we’ve got the systems and processes in place to keep us on the right course, and don’t take yourself in the wrong direction.

It’s been a great pleasure being with you for another month. Think about your own organization this month, and ask yourself as we come out of this economic downturn and into the future, what is the mindset and the intent of your organization? Because the behaviors will come based on the intent and the mindset within your organization.

Have a great month

Paul

I am sorry this TOL is so late.  Please remember you can get this TOL in three ways; reading, watching or listening.  The video and the audio versions are available as a free download either directly or via our podcast. You will find the RSS feeds at either:  http://thoughtsonleadership.biz/video for the video version or http://thoughtsonleadership.biz/audio for the audio version. Now for the content you have been waiting for:

A Reminder to Myself

I have two Granddaughters and recently I decided to write a little book entitled, Thoughts for my Grandchildren.  It is just some thoughts I wanted to share with them that may help them growing up.

One of them was,

The past is over… make peace with it and move on. You can’t always change the past… but you can always create the future

I want you to consider this as well.  Sometimes we get blocked by the past.  Something that happened that leaves us in a frame of mind and limits us and holds us back.  Sometimes it is a belief about the past, a feeling about something in the past or an emotion that the past stirs up in us.

Many times we can’t even remember what happened in detail.  Maybe it is an employee or relative that did something, and you can’t remember precisely what it was but you are still holding a grudge about it.  Worse than that, your memory has expanded the issue and made it bigger than it really was.

If there is someone that you feel that way about, ask yourself… “Is it still worth it?  Is it still valid?  Does it matter anymore?”

So my challenge for you THIS YEAR is to ask yourself, where is the opportunities to bury the past and create the future?  And I want you to do it at two levels… in your personal life and in your business life.  Both are often connected and so both should be considered.

Think about someone in particular that you don’t get on with or have had difficulties with and consider if it is still worth it.  Instead of trying to relive the past, fix the past or get over the past, ask yourself how you can define the future?  What matters is what we have learnt and what we are going to do in the future.

So this year I am asking you to consider doing this in all areas of your life.  I want you to challenge yourself to focus on creating the future and getting rid of some of the blockages in the past, especially if 2009 was a difficult year for you.

I hope 2010 has started well and I wish you all the best.

By the way, if you have any really useful thoughts that I could add to my little book to my Grandchildren, then please send them to me.  Either leave a comment or email me at paul@paulbridle.com.  I may even include them in the book and credit you for them.

I would also like to announce a new project that we have started.  It is called ‘The Bridle Report’ and is available here.  It is FREE and consists of interview clips from my travels with top executives.  All of these videos are taken from my BE INSPIRED DVD series over at The Leadership Lounge.  Please go and check out The Bridle Report and give us some feedback.

Best wishes

Paul Bridle

A Dog is for Life from Paul Bridle on Vimeo.

Leadership is long term, not just short term. Recognition is long term, not just for xmas!!

I hope you have a lovely time over the holidays and see you all in the new year.

-  Paul Bridle

P.S – On a side note I wanted to add to this post of Thoughts on Leadership to let you know something my son is doing for Cancer Research in 2010.  Below is a short summary of what he is doing and why:

I’m running 10k everyday through 2010 in aid Cancer Research.

I’ve been thinking for some time of doing something worthwhile, not easy, to look back on with pride, generate money for Charity, different and “challenging” to really push me. Having been made redundant twice over 2008 & 2009, these circumstances had an impact on me, I’d put on weight during the pressure & stresses of trying to support a young family whilst getting back on the work ladder – so I wanted to change that, making & presenting a new me by doing something: I came up with doing a 10k Run everyday through 2010.

I’m doing the challenge in aid of “Cancer Research UK” which is close to my heart having lost a grand father & grand mother to cancer, friends to breast cancer & I have friends who have lost parents to cancer. The challenge is not as easy as it might sound and I know there’ll be hard times ahead, but thats the point – goals, challenges, targets are stretching our usual boundaries.  This is not an ordinary challenge and I’ve enjoyed the people, doors and obstacles it’s brought so far; it’ll draw the best out of me and the people who have already got involved; things that are easy rarely worth having. Helping this challenge is as easy as spreading the word & sharing the idea; I’d also be interested in hearing your thoughts.

I’m logging the journey of this challenge at www.10k-everyday.blogspot.com & you can learn more about whats happening behind the challenge at www.10keveryday.wordpress.com

I wish you luck on your challenges in 2010, be well Tim.

Today’s TOL is about ROI, does it have meaning in the events industry? Recently I have been talking to some meeting planners and speakers about return on investment. It is a well-known phrase with in the financial circles. But can it apply outside the financial services? Is this an expression that can be used? Many people are arguing that in the meeting industry, you cannot use phrases like ROI for their meetings, because, how can you measure the return on investment in financial terms?

I have a problem with this because it brings the phrase down to just being a collection of words. There are a lot of words that we use that have started out in one place and have now become more than the original word or phrase. For example, an expression like “a chip off the old block” came from the old maritime of building ships out of wood. However, now means how similar to people are when they are related i.e father to son or mother to daughter.

This extends to brands, which is clever marketing over the years to now be recognized for more than its original use. For instance Hoover is now commonly used as the name for a vacuum cleaner. Another example would be Google. From originally being just a search engine for the internet the word has become a metonym for internet searching.  This movement of words can also apply for ROI.

One of the speakers I was talking to said “We’ll be the laughing stock of the financial people because they know it’s about return on investment in terms of purely financial terms”. In reality, I have found that talking to financial people; they are welcoming the fact that what was traditionally enclosed in their industry has widened their perspective.

So what is ROI, and does it apply, does it have a wider application?

Let me give you an example; Recently my wife bought a Volvo. She likes Volvo, I like Volvo. My next door neighbor bought a Kia Ceed; another neighbor has bought a brand new Range Rover and my great friend from Canada has bought his wife a Lexus.

Each one of these individuals has bought their car for their own reason. Maybe it’s what they can afford in their pocket, maybe it is because they like the style of it, maybe it’s because of something specific that they want from that particular vehicle. Whatever the reason, there is a measurement that has taken place.  In their mind there is a value that they have placed on this vehicle. Return on that value would be over time. Whether they get to sell it and sell it for the right price, or whether they get the mileage out of it. Each one of those are having its own value in their mind. So the return on the investment of buying the car is something that we’ve proven over a period of time.

This is no different to the meetings and events industry. For whatever reason we hold a meeting, for whatever reason we hire a particular speaker, for whatever reason we do, or what it is that we are doing in terms of holding a conference or an event. There will be some sort of evaluation taking place; we may not call it ROI but it has taken place.

Some people want to keep the word locked up within financial services. The truth of the matter is value will be measured whatever name people want to use, hide or run away from. There will be a measurement! Who is in control of the measurement and how it is going to be measured is the real question? If that is thought out in advance, then measuring it later is so much easier. If it is left until after the event, then it can just go so wrong.

So ROI, used in the financial services, coming out of the financial services and began to be used wider and wider. I think it does the right thing. It makes people think; what are we here for? What we are trying to do and is it going to add value at the end of the day.  Adding value is the name of the game. And if we don not get our heads around that, where are we going to go? I am going to add value to my trip by borrowing my wife’s car.

Have a good month, see you next month.

- Paul

P.S – Remember to check out the Be Inspired series at theleadershiplounge.com.