This past weekend, I picked up a ”Who I Am” and ”Why I Am Here” story that just I couldn’t put down. The title, Make the Impossible Possible (2007) first caught my eye. It’s the story of Bill Strickland and his organization, Manchester Bidwell, a jobs training and community arts program located in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Pittsburgh.

Having been deeply inspired as a high school student by a ceramics art teacher, Strickland started the Manchester Craftsman’s Guild as a 19-year old in the tumultuous late 1960’s to offer inner-city youth an alternative to the violence and hopelessness of the streets. According to an article in Pittsburgh Magazine (January 2008) citing him as Pittsburgher of the Year, “Strickland wanted to help and figured if Frank Ross’ clay instruction had turned his life around, the same might prove true for other kinds from the North Side.” 

In Make the Impossible Possible, Strickland acknowledges the power of story in growing his organization from one small studio with fifteen inner-city ceramics students to someone who received a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant, has lectured at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has served on the board of the National Endowment for the Arts, and who, along with Manchester Bidwell, has been the subject of three Harvard Business School case studies.

A rich and inspiring read, Make the Impossible Possible includes many stories from Strickland’s life and work. In it, he shares some of his fundamental beliefs:

• People are born into this world as assets, not liabilities. It’s all in the way we treat people (and ourselves) that determines a person’s outcome.
• The sand in the hourglass only flows one way. Stop going through the motions of living - savor each and every day. Life is here and now, not something waiting for you in the future.
• You don’t have to travel far to change the life you’re living. Bill grew up in the Pittsburgh ghetto, four blocks from where he came to build one of the foremost job training centers in the world.

He says, “We all have stories to tell. In fact, we can’t avoid telling them. We tell them every time we interact with another person, form a friendship, interview for a job, fall in love, ask for help, or share a dream. What my experiences prove to me is the more clearly and convincingly you are able to tell your story, the better your chance of attracting the people who can best help you move your story forward, and in whose own stories you can play a productive part.

My story has many versions - one is about clay, one is about orchids, one is about jazz, one is about the center I built out of a dream, and another is about my dream of building similar centers around the world. But underneath all of them lies a simpler, deeper story with a more fundamental message: This is what I stand for; this is who I am. I tell that story every chance I get, and it’s still helping me connect with people who are willing and able to help me enlarge my vision and accomplish my dreams.”

Listen to one or more of the short clips on this site as Bill shares some of the chapters in his story. Be sure to go to the last clip, as he’s finishing up his talk, to hear him share his “Who I Am” and “Why I Am Here” message - and see how his audience responds.

What kind of “Who I Am” and “Why I Am Here” stories are you telling to those who can help you enlarge your vision and accomplish your dreams?

Technorati Tags: Bill Strickland, Manchester Bidwell, Manchester Craftsman’s Guild, leadership, storytelling, business narrative, Make the Impossible Possible, Harvard Business School, National Endowment for the Arts, Pittsburgh, MacArthur Foundation

According to authors Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman in The Elements of Persuasion, there are two things everyone in business does every day. “We all sell something - our products, our services, our skills, our ideas, our vision of where the business is going - and we tell stories.  We sell things because that is how we as a democratic, capitalist society organize our energy. We tell stories because, as cognitive psychology is continuing to discover, stories are how we as human beings organize our minds.”

Leadership, essentially, is an act of persuasion - of winning hearts and minds, of engaging people in the vision, goals and everyday work of an organization.  Stories - and other forms of business narrative - powerfully weave fact and emotion together in a way that connects us - to the storyteller and his or her message. A well-told story not only transmits important information, it helps the listener to understand what the information means and put it in a context that she can connect with on a deeper personal level. Think of all the business parables that are in the bookstores today - people are hungry for stories that help them make sense of the complex environments in which we live and work.

Stephen Denning, author of The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling, says that effective business narrative - or storytelling - can help us as leaders to ignite action and implement new ideas; build trust (in us); build trust in our companies; transmit our values; get others working together; share knowledge; tame the grapevine; and craft and share our vision.

 In The Story Factor, Annette Simmons tells us that there are six stories we need to know how to tell:

• “Who I Am” Stories
• “Why I Am Here” Stories
• “The Vision” Story
• “Teaching Stories”
• “Values-in-Action” Stories
• “I Know What You Are Thinking” Stories

By taking the time to be intentional about the stories we tell as leaders and telling them clearly, consistently and with integrity, we build trust and credibility with our listeners.  If we’re to build successful and sustainable organizations, we need to find and tell stories that others want to be part of and connect our larger organizational stories to their personal ones. 

What’s your story?

Technorati Tags: Richard Maxwell, Robert Dickman, The Elements of Persuasion, storytelling, business narrative, persuasion, influence, inspiration,  leadership communication, Stephen Denning, The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling, Annette Simmons, The Story Factor

I spent two days in training last week with new, returning and senior members of the Michigan Quality Leadership Award (MQLA) Board of Examiners.  This state program is based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria for Business, Non-Profit, Health Care and Education.

The core values and concepts woven through the Baldrige Criteria provide a holistic framework that businesses, non-profits, health care organizations and schools can use to increase their performance excellence and improve their competitive position in today’s marketplace:

• visionary leadership
• customer-driven excellence
• organizational and personal learning
• valuing employees and partners
• agility
• focus on the future
• managing for innovation
• management by fact
• social responsibility
• focus on results and creating value
• systems perspective

Can you think of an organization that doesn’t need these core values and concepts today? Whether or not you’re ready to apply for a state or national leadership award, the appropriate Baldrige Criteria can help you and those in your organization ask yourselves some really good questions.  The challenging part, then, is using those questions to help your organization learn, innovate and improve in those areas critical to its success.

Award recipients often use the term journey to describe their performance excellence initiatives and it’s a very appropriate metaphor. Many of them probably started out in a place very similar to where you are now. You’ve heard this old saying, right?

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

–  Confucius

If your organization is ready to take the first step toward a higher level of organizational excellence, you might consider using the Baldrige Criteria as a guidebook for your journey.  Delta Possibilities offers a one-day workshop on System-Wide Organizational Excellence, using the Baldrige Criteria as a framework. If we can help you get started on your journey to excellence, please contact us at 734.929.9463 or beth@deltapossibilities.com.

For more information about state or national leadership award programs based on the Baldrige Criteria, contact the Michigan Quality Council or the Baldrige National Quality Program.

Technorati Tags: performance excellence, Michigan Quality Leadership Award, MQLA, Michigan Quality Council, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Baldrige National Quality Program, journey, organizational values, system-wide organizational excellence

 Setting the Table
Author: Danny Meyer

I first learned of Danny Meyer and his unique approach to the restaurant business through Bo Burlingham’s book, Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big.  Bo was in town in June 2006 as part of the LeadersConnect and Michigan Leaders Read program, hosted by one of the other organizations profiled in his book, Ann Arbor’s own Zingerman’s. 

In October 1985, at age twenty-seven, Danny Meyer, with a good idea and scant experience, opened what would become one of New York City’s most revered restaurants - Union Square Cafe.  Little more than twenty years later, Danny is the CEO of one of the world’s most dynamic restaurant organizations, which includes eleven unique dining establishments, each at the top of its game.  How has he done it? How has he consistently beaten the odds and set the competitive bar in one of the toughest trades around?

In this landmark book, Danny shares the lessons he’s learned while developing the winning recipe for doing the business he calls “enlightened hospitality.”  This innovative philosophy emphasizes putting the power of hospitality to work in a new and counterintuitive way: The first and foremost application of hospitality is to the people who work for you, and then, in descending order of priority, to the guests, the community, the suppliers, and the investors.  This way of prioritizing stands the more traditional business models on their heads, but Danny considers it the foundation of every success that he and his restaurants have achieved.

Some of Danny’s other insights:

• Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. These two simple concepts - for and to - express it all.
• Context, context, context trumps the outdated location, location, location.
• Shared ownership develops when guests talk about a restaurant as if it’s theirs. That sense of affiliation builds trust and invariably leads to repeat business.
• Err on the side of generosity:  You get more by first giving more.
• Wherever your center lies, know it, name it, believe in it.  When you cede your core values to someone else, it’s time to quit.

If you lead any type of service organization - or just love great stories about successful entrepreneurs - you’ve got to read this book!  I couldn’t put it down. For some additional thoughts on placing employees first in the experience equation, see Great Customer Experiences Begin By Designing Great Employee Experiences.

Technorati Tags: Danny Meyer, Bo Burlingham, Small Giants, Setting the Table, Zingerman’s, LeadersConnect, Entrepreneurs, New York

We woke to a beautiful snowfall this morning in Ann Arbor - millions of clean, white, sparkling crystals blanketing the trees and ground – a perfect metaphor for the fresh start of a new year.  January 1st is one of several times during the year when the world seems especially full of promise and possibilities.  It’s a time to reflect on the past – those things that worked well as well as the lessons we may have learned from those that didn’t work so well.  It’s also a time to be intentional about what we want to create in the future.

I haven’t made a list of New Year’s resolutions in a long time.  Instead, I choose a one-word intention for the year, a practice that keeps me focused on the big picture of what’s important to me and reminds me of where and how I want to focus my energy and attention.  All of my relationships, projects, activities and action plans are then filtered through the lens of that intention.

For 2008, my one-word intention is contribution.  I was inspired by a chapter in one of my favorite books, The Art of Possibility, by authors Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.  They invite us to ask the joyful question, “How will I be a contribution today?” The contribution practice includes two steps:

1. Declare yourself to be a contribution.
2. Throw yourself into life as someone who makes a difference, accepting that you may not understand how or why.

Today, on this day of new beginnings and fresh starts, I invite you to join me in answering the Zanders’ call to cast ourselves as contributions into the week (and year) ahead. Like pebbles tossed into a pond, the contributions we make can send ripples out far beyond the horizon we can see from where we stand now.

I look forward to the potential and possibilities of the New Year.  But first, it’s time to be fully in the present.  The snowfall outside my window is calling me.  It’s time to put on my coat, hat, gloves and boots and take those first steps…

Best wishes to all of you for a wonderful 2008.

Technorati Tags: New Year, The Art of Possibility, Benjamin Zander, Rosamund Stone Zander, Contribution