Book of the Month: Richard Florida : Who's Your City?

...How the Creative Economy is making where to live the most Important Decision of your Life

Are you living where you should be?

Richard Florida, the author of one of the most important books on the fundamental economic and social shifts we have been going through in the last few decades, 2002's Rise of the Creative Class, has written another seminal book: Who's Your City?

In my coaching practice I focus on what I call the Four Constants: Time, Space, Relationships, and Money. While there are all kinds of books out there that look at issues of time management, networking, or finances from that business perspective, few ever consider the spaces and places we live and work in and their impact on our potential for success. Who's Your City? does exactly that.

This book reviews the research (by academics and commercial organizations like Gallup) on the trends that are shaping the places we live, and why we decide to live there. Moving between hardcore statistics, anecdotal research, and his own experience of moving between great North American cities (including Toronto, where he is an economist and the director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management), Florida examines why the ‘global economy' is not taking us where we thought it might.

For decades, authors and academics have told us that the world is getting smaller and flatter, and that with each passing year, it becomes less important where you live because everything is increasingly connected to everything else. When the internet really took hold and telecommuting became a reality, we were told we could live in our hut in the hills with Old Yeller, and still do business in LA or New York without ever leaving the comfort of our ginham-curtained kitchens.

Who's Your City? completely pulls that apart. Not only is being present still important; where you live may be becoming more important than ever. Florida identifies why certain cities (and they are all cities or regions increasingly called mega-cities) just keep attracting great talent, great creativity, and ever-growing economic activity, and others languish. He further argues that our success and even our happiness is at risk if we do not consider carefully where we live. He shows how cities can have personalities and psychological profiles just like people, and presents evidence that lining up the right place with the right person can have a real impact on happiness and success.

Whether you are a young professional, a real estate agent, or someone considering a career change, this book will open your eyes. The numbers are presented in a way that is understandable, and serve to drive the arguments home. The stories, descriptions, and perceptions are clear, elegant, and thought-provoking. I don't feel it is an exaggeration to say that if you are counselling a young person considering their future, or advising anyone anticipating a move to further their careers or enrich their lives, or doing so for yourself without referring to this book, you are making a serious mistake. It's that important.

From a local perspective, it is interesting to note that in the Canadian edition of this book, Victoria factors in as one of the most attractive cities in Canada to live and work in.

Book of the Month: Marshall Goldsmith : What Got Here Won't Get You There

In What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, Marshal Goldsmith explores a very simple notion: the behaviours and habits that have worked for us in the past, may not work for us in the future.

Sounds straightforward, but like so many things that are both easy to say and true, to address this reality is no easy thing. Goldsmith argues that the one thing that poses the greatest challenge to further growth and success is often our very success itself.

Successful people often get to where they are on a raft of assumptions and habits that are founded on thinking that runs like this: “I am successful. I behave certain ways. Therefore I am successful because I behave these ways.” That is the kind of cause-and-effect fallacy that Leonard Mlodinow also explored in the last book I recommended: The Drunkard’s Walk. While most of these beliefs are really superstitions in another guise, their biggest damage is caused by the fact that so many of the behaviours that we believe lead to our success are actually negative and limiting.

Behaviours like ‘Winning too much’, ‘Making destructive comments’, ‘Withholding information’, ‘Claiming credit we don’t deserve’, etc. all can lead to a certain kind of success. These kind of deceptive, aggressive, controlling behaviours are all too often rewarded as we climb the ladders of our organizations and professions. The trouble is that all of these negative behaviours eventually limit our ability to grow past a certain point.

An even bigger problem is that by the time we get to that point, those behaviours have become ingrained habits. Upper management types the world over are showing up to work in the morning wondering why they just can’t seem to get any higher after years of successful climbing. The answer is simple: the behaviours that got them there, won’t take them the next step. Change those behaviours and beliefs, or start feeling the people and roles that matter start to pass you by.

Addressing this situation is again both easily stated and extremely difficult to act upon: get feedback to find out what your limiting behaviours are, pick the biggest offenders, and change them.

Goldsmith outlines an elegant process for using 360 Degree reviews and follow-up coaching as the best way to do this. The work is difficult, and cannot proceed without support. The coach can be a professional, but does not have to be, it can be anybody who is committed to helping you improve, and will provide the ongoing feedback and support as you do the hard work. This is something I have written about in the past, and is supported by extensive research: real behavioural change is almost impossible without coaching support. Your coach can be a professional, or your partner, parent, or co-worker, but without that person providing consistent, objective feedback and support, change is almost impossible to achieve.

Goldsmith’s writing in this book is elegant, humerous and deeply compassionate. At the same time, he is gentle but unwavering in his insistence that the failure to embark on a change process like this is not an option if we want to become better managers, leaders, or human beings. The 20 negative behaviours he addresses simply have no place in the workplace or in any of our relationships. Change like this is not optional.

This book is one of the reasons why I love what I do and the field I work in. Business, like sports, plays out the stories of what it means to be human in ways that are easily told, and that stand out in clear definition. Is ‘always having to be right’ a limiting behaviour in business? Yes. But it is also a limiting behaviour in any relationship. In the business context the outlines, rewards, and costs, of human actions are more easily defined, but in the end they are also morality tales for everyone to pay attention to.

Marshal Goldsmith, both a practicing Buddhist, and one of the most influential executive coaches in the world, gets this, and writes about it with great force and practicality. I facilitate 360 Degree feedback reviews for businesses and institutions throughout British Columbia. Everyone I have ever worked with has found this a powerful and eye-opening process that consistently leads to positive change. If you are a manager or leader wanting to improve I honestly don't think there is a process that is richer, simpler, or more elegant than the one proposed by Goldsmith.

Buy it at your local bookstore. In the Cowichan Valley, go to Volume One Books, a great book store in Duncan, BC. You can find them at 149 Kenneth Street, downtown (250.748.1533), or online.

We Watch More YouTube Videos than We Conduct Google Searches.

“ In August 2009, Americans watched 10 billion videos on YouTube. That same month, Americans conducted 9 billion searches on Google."

In this article from the site Search Engine Watch we find out that all is not as it appears in internet land. The general perception is that the ‘force of nature’ on the internet is Google. Google has even entered the English language as a verb: people don’t search, they google. If that isn’t the apex of marketing success, I don’t know what is. A whole industry has grown up around SEO (Search Engine Optimization), mostly to get clients to the top of Google’s search lists. But here’s the catch: In one month alone, people watched videos on YouTube 1 billion times more than they searched for something on Google.

That’s right. One Billion. This has to give anybody in marketing or really anyone in business, serious pause. There are still real questions about ROI (Return on Investment) and conversion for most social networking platforms but the sheer volume of traffic through YouTube alone means that this marketing channel must be taken seriously.

Particularly those businesses that have high visual values (designers, artists, stylists, architects, real estate, etc.) YouTube presents a significant channel to develop connections with new customers and deepen relationships with existing ones. Will a video on YouTube drive more customers through the door tomorrow (direct conversion)? Nope, probably not. But can it provide a canvas for you to shape and enrich your brand for the long haul? Can it provide for a content-rich way to provide value to existing customers, building brand loyalty? Absolutely. Like so many social media channels, YouTube use should be about building long term, deeply-rooted relationships with your customers . A final thought: as I have written before, finding ways to tap into the community and relationship-building power of social media is a perfect task for our younger ‘Gen Y’ employees. Set them loose with a budget video recorder, even their cell phones, and a few ideas on how to educate and entertain your customers, and you will be well on your way. And how about recruitment? How cool would it be to have your staff on video convincing other young potential hires that your business is a great place to work?

Oh... and by the way. Know who owns YouTube? That's right: Google.

Resiliency Part 3 – How are you Coping?

You think you know stress??
How about being an OR nurse? I cannot imagine an environment that would require more coping skills than a hospital operating room (except perhaps a battlefield). From having someone’s life in your hands, to dealing with hospital bureaucracy, must result in levels of stress that are hard to imagine.

In her research on resiliency among OR (operating room) nurses Brigid Gillespie identified Hope, Self-Efficacy, Coping, and Competence as significant factors in fostering the resiliency that nurses in that environment require.

Not surprisingly, Gillespie identified coping skills, specifically what she calls “problem-focused” coping, as one of the primary predictors of resiliency.

Resiliency: A Refresher
An organization requires resiliency to grow, and to bounce back smarter and stronger from any challenges.

In my first two articles on resiliency, I looked at the roles of hopefulness and self-efficacy. We learned that true hopefulness combines a clear and optimistic view of the future with the confidence that we have what it takes to get there. Self-efficacy is having the confidence that we have the necessary tools to accomplish the tasks ahead of us. Today we look at coping, the measure of our ability to deal successfully with stressful or even threatening situations.

Coping
Coping strategies fall into two categories: emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping. In the former, we cope with stressful situations by managing our thoughts and emotions (denial, humour, meditation, etc.). In the latter we cope with stress through learning, by changing our behaviours, and by changing our environments. In keeping with the solution-oriented nature of my coaching practice, I am going to call the latter ‘solution-focused coping’.

Not surprisingly, most of us use a combination of emotion- and solution-focused coping strategies when dealing with difficult situations. But as Gillespie and others have confirmed, individuals are more resilient when they focus most of their energy on solution-focused strategies.

At an organizational level, developing resiliency through stronger coping skills requires focus on three key areas: emotional safety, a learning environment, and a focus on successful behaviours.

1. Emotional Safety
Emotion-focused strategies allow us to calm down, to regroup, and to focus enough to turn to a solution-focused strategy. There is no point in undertaking complex learning- or behaviour-changing strategies when your heart is still pounding or you are overwhelmed with anxiety.

Organizations must provide an environment that is emotionally safe. Emotion-focused coping should not be our only response, but it is still a very important part of building resiliency. And we must be in an emotionally safe environment for emotion-focused strategies to be successful.

Emotionally safe environments have the following hallmarks:
· Confidentiality/absence of gossip – team members know that if stressful situations in their personal and professional lives are shared with others, that information is safe and will not be the subject of gossip.
· Bitch-buddies – I’m not kidding. Check out Winn Claybaugh’s take on this. A healthy team is one on which everyone has someone they can vent to in confidence or use as a sounding board. In these private, personal exchanges, listening, confidentiality, and empathy are the main values.
· A trust in the good intentions of others – an emotionally safe environment is one where, even when you can’t quite believe what you just heard, you have the trust and the confidence to check further because generally every member of the team has each other’s backs. Negative or hurtful comments or actions, when they do occur, are usually the result of misunderstandings, momentary stress, or a clear lack of chocolate! People usually say what they mean, and there is an absence of mind games.
· Permission to be honest – because everyone is operating in an environment of good will and has the success of the organization at heart, you can approach people with concerns or constructive criticism. If you check in respectfully and in confidence, you should find a listening attitude, and a commitment to acting on your feedback.

If you can honestly say your organization exhibits most of these elements of an emotionally safe environment, consider yourself fortunate. They are still disappointingly rare.

2. A Learning Environment
If fear is a primary reason for stress and negative behaviour, then ignorance is a primary cause of fear. Solution-focused coping requires an environment where 'seeking to understand' is valued. Each challenge is met with a commitment to understanding its causes, and to collaboratively investigating solutions.

Peter Senge, in his 1990 book, The Fifth Discipline, created the modern understanding of a learning organization. Senge identified five main characteristics of a learning organization: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, a shared vision and team learning. The last of these are key for a team with great coping skills. A sense of common purpose is extremely important. Experiences and knowledge should be freely shared. There is no room for holding onto information or knowledge for the sake of control or personal advancement.

3. A Focus on Successful Actions
The ability to change our behaviours is a critical key to coping and resiliency. You might be calm after each storm, you might even feel like you have ‘learned something from this’, but if your behaviour doesn’t change and grow in a way that makes you more effective the next time out, you are just coasting from one disaster to the next.

Resilient organizations acknowledge and reward positive changes in behaviour. These kinds of organizations have three qualities:
1. They reward us for taking risks and operating outside of our comfort zones. Operating outside of our comfort zones is necessary for growth and change.
2. They look at long-term trends , not daily blips. Even those of us with the best track records for rapid learning and constant self-improvement have days or even weeks that are outside of the norm. Smart leaders and smart partners accept that short term funks and failures are a normal part of the growth process and don't dwell on them.
3. They allow us to show up as new people . One of the traps we fall into is allowing our past experiences of others to lock our expectations of their future behaviour. We don’t allow people to change. As parents we do this a lot: we are notoriously blind to the new independence, changes, and maturity of our growing kids. We see what we expect to see, not who the person really is. If organizations do this, they seriously limit our abilities to show up and act as truly effective people with new habits and behaviours.
4. They acknowledge or reward real change as it occurs. Research has confirmed this for almost a century: nothing encourages positive changes in behaviour better than reward. Notice someone coping with a difficult situation successfully? Tell them you notice! See someone stepping outside their comfort zone even a little bit? Reward them somehow, large or small. Rewarding great performance now ensures great performance in the future.

An Action Plan for Solution-focused Coping
To summarize, here are three steps to strengthening our coping skills:
1. Use emotion-focused strategies to reduce your immediate level of anxiety and stress. Meditate, exercise, have a glass of wine; whatever it takes to allow you to get grounded enough to act. Are you working in an environment that exposes you to stress but does not provide emotional safety? Seek change, or leave.
2. Reflect and learn. Take time to understand how you got yourself into a situation in the first place. Connect with others to share situations and strategies.
3. Change your behaviour. Make a list of new behaviours that might keep you out of similar negative situations in the future. We are a collection of our habits. Identify those specific habits (or lack of them) that result in stressful situations, and do the tough but rewarding work of changing them. And if you see a collegue, peer, or employee trying to do the same, acknowledge and support their efforts. Coaching or mentoring relationships are powerful, and perhaps necessary, elements of behavioural change.

Great coping skills, emotion- or solution-focused, are largely the domain of the individual. But organizations can do a lot to support us in this area. By providing emotionally safe environments, encouraging learning, and supporting changes in action and behaviour, great organizations will increase the resiliency of both the organization and everyone in it.

Next article: the role of Competence in building a resilient organization.