Deadlines are critical in order to get things done. Most of us, myself included, need deadlines to avoid procrastinating on things that might be important but are not urgent. Both at home as well as work, I try to bookend our projects with an event that forces everyone involved in wrapping up lose ends and making sure the project is completed in time for guests to see it.

I decided to schedule an open house for The A Group’s new offices less than three weeks from our moving in date. I knew it would be a tight deadline. It’s staggering the amount of work that goes into moving offices, computer systems, phone systems, workstations, furniture, signage, and on and on. And while in the midst of all of that, still get work done. The tendency is to get enough done to be functional and continue to  fix things up as time allows. Well, time never allows for much. So after years of moving in, all the good-intentioned things we had in mind for the new space is forgotten and abandoned as the newness wears off.

Right now our new offices are frantically getting put together. Our entire team and vendors are working hard to make sure this space is done in time for our guests to walk through it. After all, we don’t want to say, “in this space we plan on putting a collaborative conference table with multiple monitors so we can connect to screens and share what’s in our computers, and we also want to create artwork based on some of our projects.”

Right now you might have projects that are in perpetual limbo. It’s functional but not completed. I suggest you set a date, invite people you care about over and give yourself a hard deadline to be finished.

What came to mind as you read this post?

Working hard and working smart are not synonyms. Yes you can work both smart and hard, but you can also spend a lot of effort and fail at the end of the day. Here are 5 more principles that will help you create and maintain a healthy and productive work environment. Ignore them at your own risk.

Rebuke privately. Praise publicly. Getting these principles right has the greatest impact on morale for both paid or volunteer staff. One time I almost, and should have, fired a staff member for publicly scolding a volunteer that was late for a key rehearsal. The same is true for praise that’s done privately. If you’re happy with someone’s performance, make sure you praise them in front of their peers and superiors.

Monitor morale. Leaders are always looking ahead to figure out what’s the next move. If morale is eroding for whatever reason, it’s your job to identify the issue on its inception and deal with it quickly. A team that loses morale is ineffective at best and a poisonous cancer (I know this is strong language, but I feel strongly about this) for the entire organization. Do not allow rudeness, bickering, or lack of respect to enter your organization. Once these traits find their way in, they will eventually create a culture of cynicism and conflict. Nothing good comes out of that…nothing.

Respect the organizational structure. As you grow and move up in the organizational chart or the organization grows deeper, the tendency is for those whom you’ve know for a while to bypass the chain of command and go straight to you, as oppose to the newly appointed direct report between you and your eager friend. Avoid the temptation to engage in a professional conversation and make sure you work the organizational chart. Unwittingly, you will be undermining your new hire and create a system of inefficiency and team hostility.

Listen intently, but reserve judgment. The tendency of a manager or leader is to want to help fix someone’s problems as soon as possible. However, the worst thing you can do is agree with a disgruntled person based on the “facts” of his or her story. I have learned that there are two sides of every conflict and the truth might be something altogether different. While you should listen, stop short of making a judgment call until you’ve done your work and heard the rest of the story.

Be as loyal to your leader as you would like for your followers to be to you. This is my number one rule in business as well as ministry. Internally we might argue over a course of action, but once a decision is made, then it is the entire team’s responsibility to defend it. If you don’t agree with the decision, you have two options: defend it or leave. People with their own agenda will always try to get to a leader through someone on his team that they think can be easily manipulated. If you agree with a disgruntled client, church member or donor and allow them to feel a sense of righteous indignation, you open the door for a lot of trouble.

What other principle would you include?

Working hard and working smart are not synonyms. Yes you can work both smart and hard, but you can also spend a lot of effort and fail at the end of the day. In the next two posts, I will be sharing some principles that I have learned by watching successful leaders and managers as well as those who got them wrong. While these principles are simple…even obvious…they seem to elude us quite often.

Do what only you can do for your organization. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Once I was the technology expert for my company–doing everything from troubleshooting network connections to installing printers and drivers. Granted, there were only 3 of us in the early days. Today I don’t even know how to use the fax machine or get a conference call started. I had to let those things go or I could never do the critical tasks only I can do for the organization.

You are hired to get the job done and not to be busy. Some people justify their salaries by the sheer amount of activity they create. You were not hired to be busy; you were hired to be effective. You must have a firm grip on your supervisor’s expectations of your output and make sure you do that.

Become an owner. No matter what position I had in any of the jobs I’ve ever worked in, I always felt that the success or failure of the organization was dependent on how well I performed. As your sense of ownership in your organization grows, your sense your entitlement diminishes.  After all, you don’t ever hear owners say, “that’s not what I’m paid to do.”

Set expectations early and often. Whether it’s an assistant, a second in command, or a volunteer, you need to set clear and measurable goals from the beginning. A critical mistake managers make is to provide someone with a written job description at the time of hiring and that never gets updated or evaluated again until things are not well. Job expectations are tied to specific projects. If you can’t measure the small stuff you will never be able to assess the big picture. Take time to define a win for each project and evaluate them at completion.

Hire well. It’s easy to get married, but painful to divorce. Find the 3Cs: Competence, character, and chemistry. Spend the time to hire the right person. Avoid the rush to “fill a position.” The wrong person in your team could be costly. As a matter of fact, the wrong hire at a key position could cost your job and in the case of small businesses, the business itself.

Find the right distance to manage from. Micromanagers are too close; this lowers trust, dis-empowers subordinates and destroys their motivation. Absentee managers are too far away; they provide insufficient guidance, don’t keep track of work being done, and aren’t there to listen and provide answers to questions that come up. The optimal distance is in between. Provide direction and guidance, let your subordinates know you’re keeping track from your own vantage point, and check in with them periodically.

Which one of these have you found most challenging in your experience?

Many of my current conversations start with “we need our own app.” I usually answer this question with one of my own, “why do you think you need an app?” The usual answer is something similar to what junior high boys give their parents when they want a new game console: “All the cool kids have one.” But before you try to keep up with the cool, rich kids of technology, I would suggest you take a step back and think about creating a mobile strategy first.

Much like creating marketing pieces without an integrated marketing campaign is not a smart idea, creating apps without first designing a mobile strategy is not a good move. Sometimes your best app is not an app at all, but a killer mobile version of your site.

Recently, Google put out some good thinking on mobile strategies. Following are 4 questions you should consider when crafting your mobile strategy:

How does mobile change our value proposition? Define your value proposition by determining what your consumer wants to do with your business in mobile then benchmark against others in your industry for ideas.

Is our organization adapting to mobile? Assign a mobile champion in your company and empower them with a cross- functional task force.

How should our marketing adapt to mobile? What is the experience like for a consumer trying to find you and connect with you? Take 5 minutes today and search for your brand in mobile as a consumer would. Discuss the result with your team.

How can we connect with our tablet audience? Check out your web experience on a tablet. Take 5 minutes today and search for your brand on a tablet as a consumer would. Maximize the tablet format with rich media creative.

How much thinking has your organization done on your mobile strategy?

A handwritten thank you note is one of most personable and kind things one can do whether in a business transaction or on a personal level. I don’t care how bad your handwriting is, it’s always a pleasant surprise to receive a note from someone who went to the trouble to write it out and mail it to you. I love it, and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t. But sometimes even something simple as a thank you note can backfire if it’s not executed properly.

So you can imagine how glad I was to get a thank you note from someone on his personal stationary. However, the label with my name on the envelope should have given it away, but I still opened it hoping for the best. It was not to be.

Obviously this was a generic “thank you” printed on personal note stationary. And to make it even more disappointing it wasn’t even signed. The whole thing was ruined for me. I now wished the person hadn’t even bothered to tell his secretary to send it out. Maybe I’m too sensitive, but I’ve tried to think of the gesture, but the botched execution is the only thing I can focus on.

Moral of the story:

No matter what your intentions are, you’re going to be judged on the execution.

I heard it just today “he’s a visionary, but he can’t execute anything.” I call that happy talk: it means nothing, just hot air. Too many people have a vision but only those who find a way to make it happen will be rewarded.

Am I too sensitive on this issue? Should I have been happy with the generic thank you, since at least I got one?

Your organization’s brand is more important than you might realize. Branding is not the “voodoo of marketers” but the sum total impression of everything you are as an organization. In a nutshell it is the essence of who you are organizationally. Communicating it properly is essential; not doing so can be disastrous. Here are the most critical brand mistakes organizations are guilty of making:

Assume your target audience understands your brand promise. Whether you manufacture guitars or lead a local church, you must always fight the insidious thought that…just because you have been around for a while or just because you are the biggest building on your side of town…your target audience understands and even cares what you have to offer. Successful brands know they need to continually tell their story to an ever-growing population faced with an increasingly noisy and crowed world.

Assume your consumers or constituents understand your brand promise. This one is tough to swallow for leaders. After all, we would like to believe that those who have “bought” into our product understand what we do and offer. Not really. Even in my own company I see that happening. The A Group has two divisions:  marketing and technology. Some of our technology clients act surprised to hear we do high-end, research-driven marketing; while some of our marketing-only clients sometimes say “I had no idea your company does that.” That’s not on them. It’s on us. We live with the day-to-day dynamics of our microcosm and fail to be intentional in communicating the complete scope of what we offer.

Fail to create a transferable and memorable way for your brand loyalists to pass your brand promise to their network. I call this group of influential, satisfied, and highly motivated people “sneezers.” They love your organization, and their products and are more than willing to let their network know about you. However, brands often fail to create simple and effective ways in which the sneezers can be successful. Churches are often victims of this. Ask a happy member why he likes his church and answers are all over the board. “People are friendly and we have a great youth program,” said a woman I interviewed lately.  No one ever thinks his church is not friendly—well, I met a guy who actually thought his church was “not very friendly”—and if I am not interested in the youth program, then the brand promise of friendliness plus good youth program might not be compelling enough to engage me or cause me to come for a visit.

Create brand promises that are not fulfilled by your product or services. This is not only a mistake, but a mortal sin for brands. Making claims or promises you cannot deliver on. I learned this lesson the hard way in my early days of consulting, even before I started The A Group. I had designed a direct mail piece that made specific claims about the quality of experience and production for an event. Another organization putting on a similar type of production asked me to design something very similar and with the same claims. Since they were in different cities and several weeks apart, I obliged. Both pieces were successful in driving people to the event. However, the “copy cat” event had the claims, but not the infrastructure to deliver its promises. It was a fiasco. I heard that people were not only disappointed…they were angry. Please don’t look at someone else’s design or claims and adopt it because you like it. In the real world, not the pretend world, people expect to get what you promised them in your promotion.

What else would you add to this list?

The A Group has just moved into its new offices. This is the third, and the largest, office space I have helped design for my company; however, this is the smallest corner office I’ve had since the beginning of our company 10 years ago. The shrinking of my personal space and the growth of my company is both symbolic and practical. It’s been a slow learning curve for me to lead a growing group of highly talented professionals. Here are some thoughts about my shrinking office:

The A Group is much more than the sum total of my skills. At one point I ran a business that was mostly, if not solely, dependent on my abilities. When you hire smart people, they will not stay around unless you allow them to grow, find their place, and make their unique contribution. You cannot do that if you believe that every great idea must come from one source, and that being you. I’ve watched my team flourish over the past years and continue to do so.

It is important to put our resources where it will best serve the organization. No one in our executive team, including me, got new furniture for their new offices. But we bought state-of-the-art Herman Miller workstations for our entire tech team. After years of working shoulder to shoulder, these guys deserved the upgrade. The executive team unanimously decided that it was the best way to invest our resources.

I am more secure than ever before in my team’s abilities to do amazing work instead of my personal brand. The entire organization has become the source of my professional pride and not my over-sized office or ego. I’m not saying that if you have a big office, you have a big ego. But it was true for me. And while my ego is still rather large, I have realized that the quality of what we do is more important than the wow of a large corner office.

Intuitively we know that the more fun we inject in activities, the more likely people are to respond positively to them. When my boys were small I used to play let’s-see-how-fast-we-can-put-up-the toys game. They would clean the room in a matter of minutes as opposed to the whining and gnashing of their teeth that would be manifest during other chores.

This video is another reminder that people will choose even a more difficult path if we make it fun.

Where have you experienced the fun theory at work in your life?

“The great majority of Christians in America will never host a meal for someone from another culture making his home in the US,” said my friend across the table.  I immediately thought of my fortune not only in having been invited for dinner, but to have been “adopted” into an American family my sophomore year in college. In retrospect, it made all the difference in the world.

I though it was a silly, frivolous prayer at the time. But in the depths of my lonely days as an international college student, I prayed to God for a family–more precisely, an American family. I had grown weary of not having a place to go during breaks, specially the long summer breaks. My parents in Brazil were financially struggling to keep me in school, my student visa limited the amount of hours I could legally work, and flying home during school breaks was just not a possibility. I never thought I would see that prayer answered, that is until Milton Hollifield Sr, a country preacher from the North Carolina mountains came looking for me. I had met “preacher Hollifield” and his entire family a couple of months earlier during a speaking trip to several congregations in the foothills of Black Mountain, NC.

They were a gregarious, loud, and even obnoxious bunch. I thought of my own crazy, loud, and obnoxious family as I experienced dinner with them. But now, out of the blue, Milton insisted I visited them during the Christmas break. “We’ll figure out how to get you there and back. You just need to plan to be with us.” There was no arguing with the man. So I did.

I was never the same.

I spent every holiday and school break with the Hollifield clan for the next several years until I got married and had a family of my own. Milton and Elizabeth made me one of their kids, even though I was closer to the age of their grand kids. I embraced corn bread and greens, livers and onions, and the Sunday morning staple of burned cinnamon rolls. I stuck out like a sore thumb in a rural community and loved every moment of it. I learned so much about love, family, grace, and acceptance from my new family.

I watched Milton get up every morning, read his Bible and pray for the growing-list of people in his life. Once you got added to the list, only death removed you. At 81, Milton still prays for me everyday. He reminded me of that not long ago.

I cannot imagined what my life would have been had a man whom I met only once, and briefly, not insisted I joined his family for Christmas. There are more people like me everyday in communities all across the country–college students, families, and professionals who are making America their new home. For their sake, as well as ours, I hope we can open our homes and invite them in.

Have you ever opened your home to someone new to country? What happened?

In our pursuit of improvement, of becoming our very best, we can find ourselves always looking for the negative in every situation.  As a consultant, I’m paid to figure out how to improve communication, technology, and create new and better systems. Being critical is part of the skill set that forces me to see what could be and not just what it is. But recently I ran into a statement from Shawn Achor in his book “The Happiness Advantage” that has forced me to think deeper about my consulting skills. He writes,

“Constantly scanning the world for the negative comes with a great cost. It undercuts our creativity, raises our stress levels, and lowers our motivation and ability to accomplish goals.”

Achor goes on to support this statement with case studies and illustrations. Even if he didn’t, the truth in it resonates with me. How can I be an effective critic without becoming a negative person? That’s tough. In the past few years, I have been conscious about how negativity can affect every area of my life and how easily I can find fault with everything around me. Here’s how I’m fighting it.

Not a critic, but a servant. That’s perhaps the most difficult of all the shifts I have had to make over the years. I’m not hired to be a critic, even though some of my observations might come across as criticism. I’m ultimately hired to serve an organization, a cause, or a person. My contribution is not only to point out what’s wrong, but to help find a solution.

First the positive. No matter the circumstance or dilemma I’m dealing with, there are always a lot of positives to recognize.  It’s easy to focus on the 20% that needs to change than on the 80% that’s working well.

A kind heart. Difficult conversations are a lot less painful when they are encased in gracious language and attitude. I remember as a young professional watching a well-known consultant use condescending language as he reported his findings to a group of leaders. It didn’t make him look good or smart in my eyes. It made him come across like a big ugly jerk that I wouldn’t want to ever hire or emulate.

Do you agree with Achor? How do you keep from being negative?