| Lorne Rubis

Dancing with the Stars at Work

201128 Jan
Comments
Posted inBe Abundant

Celebrating and hoopla at work are important ingredients of a respectful culture …how can we each have an impact? Just do it.

As the CEO, I have the ability and resources to make celebration and hoopla a part of our culture. Last week the company I lead had our annual awards night where excellence was recognized. However it was much more than dinner, drinks, and individual/team recognition. It was a companywide team-building event!

Great teams and companies have the ability to celebrate as a way of reflecting the respect they have for each other. At this event, my team showed a very funny video spoofing the Character Triangle, where they depicted the Chairman and Founder of the company and I in dispute over a parking place. It brought the house down in uproarious laughter. My VPs also did this silly dance with the fog machine pumping out a cloud to the beat of rock and roll, each wearing a t-shirt emblazed with respect, accountability, and abundance. The entire company had a blast; every person side by side regardless of position or tenure.

I’m a fan of celebrations and also day to day hoopla. I’m in favor of celebrating mini milestones, birthdays, customer wins, etc. So here is my challenge. Regardless of your role, celebrate something with your teammates. Workplaces are meant to achieve a mission, often measured in commercial terms. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun …everyday. It reinforces, when done in good taste, the respect we have for each other.

Action: What are you going to celebrate this week? And oh yeah …music and dancing at work celebrations are good things in my opinion.

Have fun in the triangle,

Lorne

What is Your Personal Financial Metric at Work?

201125 Jan
Comments
Posted inBe Accountable

Each of us better know how our roles make a difference financially. If it’s not obvious, we have a responsibility to find out.

Business processes in companies change all the time. Therefore roles and positions change regularly and for most of us, what we do today has likely changed in the recent past. Organizations must be respectful but cannot be sentimental. Each role must add value, or be changed to add value. If the activity doesn’t count in measurable terms, then the organization will eliminate it sooner or later.

I challenge every team member in the company I run to personally connect their roles with the company mission and yearly objectives. Each of our jobs should have metrics that directly or indirectly connect with the commercial viability of the organization, whether we’re in a business or nonprofit. Having the right attitude is vital but not sufficient. Each of us must produce measurable value. Do you know what the key measures in your role are? Can you write them down right now? Do you know how you score? Are you meeting or exceeding the desired measurable targets? What is your personal action plan?

Please don’t be complacent on this. If you or I can’t answer in crisp and clear terms, it will be only a matter of time and our role will be changed, eliminated, or both.

Action: Be accountable. Outline what you believe the key measures are, and confirm with your boss. Stay tuned to how you are doing. Proactively work to improve and define and connect what you do with the organization’s purpose.

Measure in the Triangle,

Lorne

Oh, the Places You Can Go …at Work

201121 Jan
Comments
Posted inBe Accountable

There are important places to visit in your organization. Have you been there?

Over the last few days I’ve run into a few articles regarding “best places to travel to in 2011.” Of course this usually involves a sun-soaked beach or hip European metropolis. However I began thinking about this concept and wondered about the positive benefit of applying the same approach at work. So here are my choices as “places to go” in your company. If you take these trips over the year I promise you that you will learn a lot and be able to do your job better. Ok, we’d all rather be in Maui but work with me on this:

Customer Service. See if you can meet with someone from CS to learn about the concerns expressed by customers. Even better… get on the phone with them for an hour or so. Customer complaints are great vehicles for learning.
Order Processing. Someone processes the orders customers make. Do you know how that happens? What can you learn from seeing an order fulfilled?
Accounts Receivable. What is it like to follow up with customers who are late payers? What process is used? How is this done with respect?
IT Helpdesk. What is it like being on call at the help desk? What do they do daily?
Coffee with a Senior Leader. Pick one leader you’ve not spent much time. Tell them you’d like to learn about their leadership philosophy. Ask for 15 minutes over coffee.
What other “vacation” spots, unique to your company, can you visit?

You and I likely have our hands full with our own work assignments. It may seem presumptuous to want to spend time to learning about other areas. However I believe “traveling to another viewpoint” over coffee or lunch is very rewarding. It is very respectful to genuinely learn from others in our workplace. It helps us understand our work more in relationship to others. We’ll all be better because of it.

Action: Let’s you and I get our passports stamped around our workplace. Let’s learn by visiting colleagues.

Live the Triangle,

Lorne

Have You had Breakfast with Schmucks?

201118 Jan
Comments
Posted inBe Respectful

We learn a lot by observing how others get treated. How do we rate ourselves as consistently respectful towards others?

I recently made the mistake of renting the movie Dinner for Schmucks. I’m not in the business of reviewing movies but I thought it was weak. I believe the premise of the show is that rich, “smart” business execs have dinners to make fun of unwitting participants who are labeled as “schmucks.” In the end the “idiots” turn out to be the extraordinary people and the “rich/smart guys” show themselves to be in the reverse role. The message: we need to respect the unique angles each of us brings to the table. Although the box office performance of this movie reinforces its limitations, there is some merit in reminding us of the importance of the message it was trying to convey.

I was at breakfast with a number of execs the other day. The waiter who was taking our order was struggling. He mixed up orders and was stumbling over himself. One person at our table began to ridicule the waiter behind his back. I refused to participate. Hey, I’m no saint. But I find it flat out wrong and disrespectful to diminish others. Yes their performance for one reason or another may be substandard. And as customers we have a right to respectfully point out behavior that is not meeting expectations. Making fun of others is just not cool. There is zero value in doing it. In fact I wonder if this person includes me as an “idiot” when I’m not around. Frankly I wonder what merit or value he gets in acting that way?

Action: Applying a belief involves connecting our head, heart, and action. If we have a belief, we have to have the courage to help align into everyday action; in our small way change the world. Ask ourselves if we treat all people respectfully; whether they’re serving us breakfast or signing our paychecks. Set the example of what we believe in action. Others will watch and learn. Our everyday thoughts and actions will define what we really believe.

Live the Triangle,

Lorne

Character Triangle

Our character is exclusively ours. We define it by how we think and what we do. I believe that acting with Character is driven by what I call the Character Triangle.

What, exactly, is the Character Triangle (CT)?

The CT describes and emphasizes three distinct but interdependent values:

Be Accountable: first person action to make things better, avoiding blame.
Be Respectful: being present, listening, looking again, focusing on the process.
Be Abundant: generous in spirit, moving forward, minimizing the lack of.