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Friends,
 
After I interviewed Quicken Loans’ Chairman Dan Gilbert on my radio program last week, he and I were commiserating about our unceasing volumes of e-mail.  We’re bailing messages out of our Blackberries, but our buckets seem inadequate to keep pace with the incoming volume.  Then I was talking with someone at a reception the next day, and she said, “multi-tasking has changed the world, and there is nothing we can do about it.”   Well, to me that last clause has always been like a red cape in front of a raging bull.  “Nothing we can do????”
 
I am determined to fight back this week.  Fight for myself.  For my kids.  And offer aid to my co-workers and friends.  Because I’m quite sure this multi-tasking’s not all good.  There are two aspects that demand resistance. 
 
First, there is mounting evidence that multi-tasking diminishes overall productivity.  Dr. David Meyer, Chair of the Cognition and Perception Area in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan* is one of a number of researchers who have been observing people as they attempt to multi-task and carefully clocking times and results.  Dr. Meyer says that as people toggle, for instance, from email to other computer work, or from driving to cell phone calls, his clinical work is proving that their minds routinely lose time in the switch.  The one-second or so loss, Meyer suggests, can be fatal when you’re driving at 60 miles per hour and your concentration must be re-adjusted.  Researchers suggest we try serial activity — finish one thing, then start the next – as a way to more efficiently get the work done.  My commitment: I will NOT switch to email while in the middle of key concentration work this week, and I won’t drive-and-talk.
 
Perhaps even more damaging than the switching between work and work, is the multitasking between work and people.  I asked a roomful of HR managers last week how many were doing email and voicemail between 7 pm and 7 am.  About 70% of the hands went up.  I didn’t ask how many had kids.  Or how many of their kids were talking to them while they were emailing.  I am guilty of it.  Too often.  I make kids and co-workers and my spouse wait, as I follow the trail of an email whose rectangular flag has grabbed my attention.  How do I measure that loss?  More important, how do I start to get it back?
 
I LOVE email, but if you’re like me you’ve got to manage it better to lead
 
With your best self,
 
 
Dan

 

*  You can read a press release about one of Dr. Meyer’s studies here: http://www.apa.org/releases/multitasking.html

Today on the Dan Mulhern show we’ve got a great one-two punch: NFL Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown and Bishop Nathaniel Wells, Jr., of Muskegon.  The pair are working together on a program called AmerICan that helps develop life skills for people trying to turn their lives around.  Why are some folks satisfied to be about the business of caring for themselves and their families, while others bring tremendous drive to change whole communities?  Listen to two great stories of men driven to make a difference.  Do you ever wonder where your drive comes from, what created it, or how you can impact the sense of purpose and drive of those around you?  Click the link below and to the left to hear some interesting reflections.  Today at 6 PM Eastern time.

Today promises to be a GREAT show as I’m joined by Jim Kouzes, co-author of The Leadership Challenge, arguably the best leadership book on the market.  Kouzes and his colleague Barry Posner have written one of the most research-based and readable books out there on leadership.  Click on the link to the left to hear the show today at 6 PM, eastern standard time.

Friends,

Wednesday was an enlivening day. Day 3 of the new employee orientation at Quicken Loans. No, I don’t have a new job, but the day made me think that this would be one cool place to work. (If Quicken sounds interesting to you, here’s a link: https://www.quickenloanscareers.com/web/) I was slipped in among 340 brand new employees – Quicken has been adding similar numbers every month. Although they offered coffee, tea, and soft drinks, the clear drink of choice was Red Bull, an energy drink. I wasn’t sure they needed it, because the average age was half my own; one guy was only 19! And they were all pretty fired up, as they spent the day listening to and interacting with “Chief Ism-ologist, Dan Gilbert.” Ism’s are Quicken’s title for the principles that are central to their culture and success. In more normal corporate parlance, Chief Ism-ologist Gilbert, goes by the term Chairman. I could write a month’s worth of RFLs on my experience on Wednesday. Let me begin by highlighting one point: the incredible commitment to enriching Quicken’s people. On the Fortune list of “100 Best Companies to Work For,” Quicken leads the pack of 100 in two separate categories: fastest employment growth and number of hours of training.* Quicken employees average 250 hours of training per year. Perhaps it’s why they have 94% customer satisfaction on the mortgages they close, in an industry where barely 10% of consumers would recommend their mortgage banker. I wonder why it is so hard for us to get this model: Enrich the employees who enrich the customers . . . who come back.

Commitment to the people starts at the top. Dan Gilbert spends a full day every month doing these employee orientations. Not once a year, not a video, but live 9-5, at the front of the room. He emphasized over and over that employees should take control of their environment. If a process doesn’t make sense, get it changed. If a light’s out, change it. If a customer calls, return the call, every call, within 24 hours. Don’t return a call, and you will hear from Dan or CEO Bill Emerson, who make calls every night to mortgage bankers who haven’t returned their calls to customers. The calls are not punitive, but meant to reinforce the importance of customer service and to figure out how to meet that standard without exception. The calls go both ways. If there is anything about the business Dan should know, he told them, “call me.” He gave them his direct extension and his cell phone number, and in the course of the day played back multiple voicemails he had received from employees.

You can talk about the importance of employees. We all do. And you can live it. In your world, how might you enrich your people this week? Give them knowledge. Be available. Learn their business. Demonstrate your interest, to

Lead with your best self,

Dan

* Quicken’s training hours are twice as high as their nearest competitors. But there is one strange exception: Arnold & Porter, a D.C. law firm, listed their hours as “varies” in 2006 and in the 2007 edition claim 1014 hours. I can only speculate that they are referring to work that lawyers collaborate on, in which case some mentoring or training takes place on the job; otherwise the number makes no possible sense.

Friends, 

I have taken on a lot of public work.  And I wonder if a dream last night resulted from my heightened notoriety.  I dreamed I was on my way to a meeting, with a group of CPAs who were announcing a generous program to help people with their taxes.  When I got to their building there was a great fat squirrel that seemed to want to get in the door.  I flicked it gently with my foot away from the door.  Then as dreams go sometimes, I continued to flip it away with my foot, thinking nothing of it.  Within an hour I found that YouTube was offering video of the first gentleman “repeatedly kicking a harmless squirrel.”  The local TV stations already had it on their website.  The dream was full of anxiety about how to extricate myself from this PR mess. 

Last week, I wrote about Ron Heifetz’ metaphor: leaders in authority conduct a lot of energy, as they try to meet all the needs and wants and cares of the group.  Once in the boss’ seat, the mayor’s chair, or the public’s eye, pressure mounts.  AND, scrutiny rises.  Whether it’s Scotter Libby, William Bennett, William Clinton, Rush Limbaugh, Anna Nicole Smith, Brittney Spears, a mayor, a CEO, or a coach’s husband, when human mistakes are made they are magnified for all the world to see.  If it’s always been true that “bad news travels fast,” in this internet world, bad news not only travels at hyper speed, but literally travels to the ends of the earth.  We are all human, prone to mistakes and excesses.  Yet when we’re in authority, our mistakes can become major distractions, completely undermining our ability to get people to focus on the work at hand. 

Is there hope?  Of being perfect, no.  But of managing the energy we are conducting, yes.  We may face great external and internal pressure to, for instance, turn around a failing school, balance the budget, make partner at the firm, or get our team into the playoffs.  How do we manage the creeping, invisible, and invasive pressure?  Step one is to gauge the pressure, to see it, and to be honest about the level of emotional pressure we are under.  Sometimes you see the pressure only from the symptoms: you’re drinking more, your stomach’s been a mess for two straight weeks, the migraines are coming more frequently, you are buying lottery tickets by the handful, or you’re continually raising your voice with your kids or your staff.  Step two is to own the job of managing the stress.  Stress affects you, and it will affect others, too, because people are plugged into you.  The energy you conduct, they also will feel.  Let me suggest the first step in management of stress: talk about it with someone – spouse, friend, rabbi, counselor, business coach.  Don’t just let it rattle around inside until it in some way eats you up or erupts onto the internet. 

If this unusually foreboding message doesn’t apply to you, you might watch those you love, especially those conducting much energy.  Be mindful of ways to ease your stress, or the pressure of those leading around you.  Heighten your sensitivity and remain honest about the symptoms that show up in reality, as you  

Lead with your best self, 

Dan 

P.S.  Thanks to so many of you who ordered my book last week.  You helped propel me up Amazon’s list from 248,000^th place on Monday morning, up to the 600s.