I had the opportunity recently to attend Audible's Customer Appreciation Day at their headquarters in Newark, NJ. They hold this event occasionally to thank their loyal customers. The session consisted of meet and greet, a tour of their facility and dinner. One thing that became apparent was that the Audible Customer Care team that hosted the event had no agenda but just to thank the customers who attended. At the end of the evening, you feel like you are part of their customer care team. The interesting thing about the event was that the Customer Appreciation Day initiative was led by their customer care team. It was not a brainchild of some executive at Audible. This shows how much Audible management empowers its employees to be highly customer-centric. We spent close to six hours with Audible Customer Care team. After spending that much time at Audible and their customer care team, I was left with the following impressions: 1) Audible has an outstanding culture. The people we met during the visit seemed highly motivated, happy, and passionate about their work. 2) Audible is playing an integral part in Newark. An excellent example of this is the major restoration work of the church where they turned an old, dilapidated church into a modern office environment for developers while retaining the architectural beauty of the church. It's amazing what they have done by blending the old with the new. Audible embarked on a four-year project to turn a church into a monastery for developers. Though I am not an architect, even I was left impressed by what they have done to this place. You can bet that Audible developers are going to be producing "blessed" code for a long time. 3) Audible has a lot to teach with the audiobooks they create. But I was surprised by how much they have to teach in how seriously they take customer care. 4) Last impression has to do with the conversations that companies need to have with their customers to know them better. There were three levels of conversations that took place at the Audible Customer Appreciation Day. Level 1 -- Meet and Greet Talk where you talk about the kinds of audiobooks you like to read. There is not much depth to the conversation at this level but to get to know the people. Level 2 -- Tour Talk where you talk more about what kind of genres, books, and narrators you like. This is all about the kind of experience you have with their product. Level 3 -- Dinner Talk where you get to talk about how their product is enriching your life. It is at level 3 that you find out things since dinner is an intimate setting where you know the people and your guards are down. So in my case, I said it is the classics audiobooks that I like to listen to. I added that I would not read classics if I could not also listen to them. Reading and listening to classics has made me smarter, wiser, and happier. Now there is a lot I provided that I could only provide during a dinner. Time allows you to get to know each other better. Today a lot of companies do not give this amount of time to their customers, let alone even their most loyal customers. Audible knew me before as a customer data before the Customer Appreciation Day. Now they know me as a person. That is something a lot of companies can learn from Audible that you don't know your customers unless you are willing to spend time with them with no agenda. Audible certainly knows that if you really care about your customers, it is not a bad idea to bring the loyal ones to your headquarters and spend some time with them. Audible has a very bright future since they understand that you can't succeed in business today if you don't focus on three important things: employees, customers, and community. Audible gets high marks on all three. ##### Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. Please contact him if you would like to attend his workshop or invite him to have it at your site or have him give a talk on Interviewing or High-Stakes Speaking. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877.
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For exercise, I like to walk, not jog. Walking lets me multitask in that I get to do several things such as exercise, enjoy nature, listening to a podcast or an audiobook, thinking, reflecting, and generating ideas. Nothing invigorates me more than a good one hour walk at a park near where I live. I walk the whole course except when I come to this hill (shown in the picture). I jog this part. I not only want to get my heart rate beating a little faster, but test my focus. I do this every day as a way to remind me that when you do something hard, you got to think it, plan it and then do it. Here is what I do before I get closer to the bottom of the hill. Keep the end goal in mind, which is to jog without stopping to the top stake located fifty feet past the top of the hill (on the left in the picture). Steps I follow 1) Get control of the breathing 2) Get control of the pace 3) Keep the head down to focus on the next step and not look up. When I look up, I lose control of my pace, breath, and focus and really struggle. I used to stop when I did this. 4) Keep myself occupied by listening to a podcast or an audiobook. 5) Focus on one step at a time until I get to the top and then continue my walk. I take a breath to reflect and say I am now ready to climb different kinds of hills for the rest of the day. This helps me better focus on whether I am working on a book, a speech, or a workshop. When I get to the top, I feel good. I know it is not a big deal for joggers, but it is a big deal for me since I can't jog the whole course due to the pain in the metatarsal part of my left leg. The jog up the hill reminds me that we are climbing hills every day and with some plan, thought and resolve, you can make it to the top and continue your journey till you come across another hill. With more jogging up the hill, it gets manageable but never any easier. And that is a good metaphor for to keep in mind when you take on a physical challenge. The reason I am pointing this personal thing I do is that you can also take on some small physical challenge and use it as a way to motivate yourself to do something hard every day. If you can't walk or jog, then perhaps you can solve a puzzle, meditate or do yoga. Using a process to do one thing can help clear up how to tackle something hard in another area. ##### Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can contact him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877. Please contact him if you would like to attend his workshop on "Interviewing is the Most Important Skill for Success Today" to accelerate getting a good high-paying job and developing a critical skill for success. Tiger Woods showed everyone that he can win majors in golf when he won the Masters in 2019 when most thought he would never win another major. He showed that he still is a great golfer mainly because of his faith in himself, his game and his relentless work ethic. But then he made a big mistake by not playing in any tournaments before the next major, the PGA Championship which comes one month after the Masters. You would think he would not repeat this mistake again, but he did as he did not play in any tournaments after the US Open till he teed up at the British Open. He opened with a 78 and did better in the second round with a 70, but missed the cut. Tiger missed the cut at the PGA Championship and at the British Open. That is a big deal for him. Perhaps I am too hard on the world's greatest golfer for missing a cut, but he is Tiger Woods and time is not on his side to catch and surpass Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 majors. To win a major, you have to play in the minor tournaments a week before or two weeks before a major. If your game is off a little, it can be a difference between competing and missing a cut. The competition is that good at the PGA level. Tiger probably took time off to rest his back, but golf is about touch and feel. You can't practice your way to competing and winning a major. You win majors by playing in the minor tournaments before the major. This applies not to Tiger but all of us in what we do. Now if you are an avid Tiger supporter, you may say that he missed the cut because he was not that familiar with the brutal Beth Page Black course where PGA Championship was played. Though he does not know Beth Page Black as well as Augusta National Golf Club where Masters is played, but Tiger did win the US Open on the same Beth Page Black course in 2002. So that excuse falls flat. I just think he was rusty for not playing before the PGA Championship. The winner, Brooks Koepka played last week before the major, and the runner-up, Dustin Johnson, played two weeks before the PGA Championship. Tiger didn't play, and I think it caught up with him as he missed the cut by one stroke. The lesson to take away from this is that practice is not enough. As Allen Iverson, a great basketball player, once went on a famous rant about practice that "We're talking about practice. How silly is that?... We're not talking about the game---the actual game---when it matters. " Brooks Koepka competed the week before the PGA Championship, and he was in a top form and became a repeat champion. Last week's tournament became a practice for him that helped him win the major. I hope Tiger does not make this mistake again since it was boring watching golf when he is not competing in majors. So if you want to win, you can learn a lot from Tiger Woods but not taking time off between majors. You have to be sharp before the major, so you have a good shot at winning when the stakes are the highest. ##### Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can contact him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877. Please contact him if you would like to attend his workshop on "Interviewing is the Most Important Skill for Success Today" to accelerate getting a good high-paying job and developing a critical skill for success. The biggest mistake you can make when you have to solve a problem is to outsource it to someone else no matter what the problem is. You own the problem, so you better know how to solve it. This does not mean you actually have to do the actual work. But you must be able to explain the problem, its causes, different solutions being considered, the preferred solution that you can sell it. But you may be saying, you often don't know enough to solve a problem. Then learn it--fast. There are no shortcuts to solve problems. Today this is not hard since we have easy and fast access to so much information. It does not take long to understand your problem and come up with solutions if you are willing to make an effort. I ran into a difficult problem recently when my bi-level chimney in my house became unstable due to settling. What to do? I am no chimney expert, so first I had to gather as much information to understand the problem and then come up with the best solution for a reasonable price. The solution at a reasonable price means you have to do a lot of work since there is a lot of biases among contractors and in some cases, a lot of scams taking place. Your only antidote to being scammed is to know more than the experts and the scam artists. If you don't then you are partially to blame for becoming a victim. Along the way, I realized that every contractor I called, I learned more and I didn't stop till I knew more than the contractors. Fortunately, this didn't take long with Google and YouTube. What would you do if you ran into this problem? Some contractors said they would strap the chimney to the roof and the house to stabilize it. Some contractors said that they will demolish half way and rebuild the chimney to stabilize it. Some contractors said to demolish the whole chimney and rebuild it. As you can see those chimney experts had all kinds of solution to this problem but what did they not ask to propose a better solution. This is something we all will run into when we deal with experts. They are experts of what they know, not what the best solution is for you. Before you pick one, I have to give you one additional information, and that is that the chimney is primarily used to remove the exhaust from the water heater. And the water heater is more than fifteen years old. The furnace is not using the chimney to vent the exhaust. Now, what would you do? Okay, here is the solution I came up with after thoroughly understanding the problem and different solutions. Step1: Replace the existing water heater with a high-efficiency water heater that does not have to use the chimney Step 2: Demolish the chimney and not rebuild it since it is no longer needed. Step 3: Repair the wood paneling and install vinyl siding to cover the area used by the chimney. The total cost for this was approximately $7,000 from worked performed by licensed contractors. The only person who came up with this solution was me since no one understood the problem completely like I did. The reason for this is that no one spent as much time on it as I did. In the end, it was my problem, and I owned it, and I wanted to own the solution too. Now, this is something we all are going to have to deal with something similar if you are a homeowner, but the point is that we have to also to do the same at work and come up with an optimal solution. And it is not easy and quite cumbersome. You have to keep asking till you become the master of your problem and solution and have lots of patience. One last thing. You have to ask really stupid questions to become smart fast. I learned this from all the episodes of watching the TV detective show" Colombo." ##### Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakstage whether ii is job interviews, sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. In addition he was recognized with an award from Hire Heroes USA for his volunteer work with military veterans and their spouses. coaching them get good high-paying jobs transitioning from military to civilian life. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can get more information at www.winningspeechmoments.com. You can contact him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877. If you have a high stakes event coming, contact him right away. It could be the difference between winning and losing. A recent study came out that showed that dogs are not that smart compared to other animals. The study uses a lot of scientific terms, but they conclude that "dog cognition does not look exceptional." I think they missed one important thing when they measured smartness and that is you don't need to be smart if you are lovable and give unconditional love. Isn't that what makes dogs so smart that we humans find it so hard to do? When my son was young, I asked him to get off his smartphone and do his homework in the dining room so I could watch him while I was doing dishes. When I came to see how he was doing, I saw my neighbor walking his dog Rocky from my living room window. I said to my son that “Rocky has such a great life.” My son immediately started laughing and said to me, “But Rocky is a dumb dog that doesn’t do anything.” I said to my son, “Rocky is very smart. He gets everything from doing two things: Love and be lovable.” My son was still not convinced, so I said to him: “Does Rocky have to go to school and do homework?” “Does Rocky ever have to pick up his crap?” “Does our neighbor take Rocky for a walk twice a day?” “Does Rocky ever complain about not getting his food on time?” "Does Rocky have to take out the garbage?" I was on a roll and added: “Do we pick up your crap?” “Do we take you out for s walk or drive in the morning and evening?” “Do we always give you food you like?” “Do we let you stay home and do nothing?” "Who has a good life?" My son, finally realizing that Rocky was very smart in his own way, stopped laughing and went back to do his homework. He knew he could not be as smart as Rocky in getting everything Rocky was getting. Dale Carnegie said it best in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People that "Did you ever stop to think that a dog is the only animal that doesn’t have to work for a living? A hen has to lay eggs, a cow has to give milk, and a canary has to sing. But a dog makes his living by giving you nothing but love." And when his dog Tippy died from being struck by lightning, he felt a deep loss and writes with the following moving words: "You never read a book on psychology, Tippy. You didn’t need to. You knew by some divine instinct that you can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you." Carnegie knew that dogs are very smart since they figured out one thing that you don't need to do much to increase your IQ points but give unconditional love. Now if this was so easy, then why we humans find it so difficult to do and has made Dale Carnegie's famous book so popular even today. Just imagine how many IQ points we would add if we could learn this one trait from dogs. Who's smart now? Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether is is job interviews, sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. In addition he has won recognition from Hire Heroes USA for his volunteer work with military veterans and their spouses. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can get more information at www.winningspeechmoments.com. You can contact him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com if you need help where you want to thrive on a high stakes stage. "If you are willing to do only what's easy, life will be hard. But if you are willing to do what's hard, life will be easy." -T Harv Eker Young people entering the workforce aspire to get to the top---real fast. When they ask people for advice on what they have to do to get to the top? The typical advice they get is work hard and smart and look for opportunities and when they arise, grab them. You never know where it may lead you. But, what does that look like in real life? What have other famous people that can be used as a lesson on the path to the top? Let's look at what Mark Cuban. American businessman and investor, did that got him toward a path to success. It comes down to one acronym: RTFM ("Read the f***ing manual." That's right. Here is what he says in his book How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It. "Turns out not a lot of people ever bothered to RTFM (read the frickin’ manual), so people started really thinking I knew my stuff. As more people came in, I could offer honest comparisons because I knew all the different software packages we offered, and customers respected that. After six months, he started getting consulting jobs from clients who needed help installing software at their office. He was making so much money that he moved from living with six friends and rent move into a three-bedroom apartment with his own bedroom. That was a big deal for him at that time." What Cuban did was to know something in depth that others did not want to take time knowing. The knowledge from reading the manuals helped him stand out among his colleagues. He was able to add value to clients and not only get him noticed but made him good money---both for his computer store and himself. He learned a valuable lesson on how to stand out that he continues even today. But now you know how you too can do it in a business environment if you are willing to work hard and smart. RTFM. It can put you on a path to success. On a grander scale, money and power often go to the person who knows the intricacies of something that very few do. The reason for this is that they are in the inside and took the time to study the details that others did not care to. Kowing the details is what Robert Moses, American public official, used to become very powerful in New York. Moses, according to Robert Caro's book The PowerBroker: Rober Moses and the Fall of New York, knew how to draft a bill that made the position of the president of the Long Island State Park Commission extremely powerful that he was appointed to by Governor Al Smith. Moses had learned a hard lesson when he tried to be a reformer that free and open debate does not give one power. It is mainly through deceit---knowing the inner workings of what goes in a bill and then get it passed in a way that draws little to no attention was his recipe to gain power. He knew how to grab power, and nothing was going to stop him. So what did Robert Moses know that others didn't? 1) The unique interpretation of the word "appropriation." 2) How to increase the authority of the Long Island State Park Commission 3) How to pass the bill when no one was paying close attention 4) Get close to Governor Al Smith, so he appoints him as the president of the Lond Island State Park Commission The unique interpretation of the word "appropriation" In 1924 this word in legislative context meant allocation of funds. However, no one bothered to correct something that was passed in a conservation law in 1884 that appropriation meant government took possession of remote forest lands from landowners so it could not be sold to lumbering companies for stipping. This part of the bill was never repealed and Moses now had the law to help him appropriate land for his projects. How to increase the authority of the Long Island State Park Commission Moses took advantage of words that were not defined to empower the Long Island State Park Commission to control forty thousand acres of land. Moses used all kinds of trickery including lying to older legislators to hide his real intention of gaining power over the property. How to pass the bill when no one was paying close attention Moses was shrewd in making sure that the bill was introduced by a junior member whom Moses didn't tell much of what his intention was with the Long Island State Park Commission. Moses made it appear that this was a routine bill not to draw any attention. It worked. There was no question asked about the word "appropriation" or any other language in the bill. Ther was no debate, and the bill was passed by unanimous vote by both the Assembly and the Senate on the last day of session on April 10, 1924. Get close to Governor Al Smith so he appoints him as the president of the Lond Island State Park Commission Al Smith, Governor of New York, appointed Moses as the Long Island State Commission. Caro writes in his book, "At the age of thirty-five, Robert Moses had power. And no sooner did he have it than he showed how he was going to use it." And he remained a dominant figure in New York state and city for close to fifty years. It all started knowing something that very few people knew on how to draft a bill to empower himself. Both these examples show that to move up, you have to know the details and then know how to leverage that knowledge to your advantage, even if you have to be devious like Robert Moses. If you are willing to do that, then you too can become rich, powerful and famous someday. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He helps people win by giving high stake speeches and executive job interviews. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. You can get more information at www.winningspeechmoments.com. You can contact me at joza@winningspeechmoments.com. You just finished interviewing at a company you like. You like the boss. You like the team. You like the environment. You like the pay. The only thing standing in your way is getting a formal job offer. So what are you probably overlooking that is likely to make you happy at work? It is your boss, stupid. More specifically, the technical competence of your boss. Just because you like your boss doesn't mean she is the right boss for your work happiness and career growth. In fact, you have to ask some hard questions to see if you will be happy and successful working for her. Don't be too quick in pulling the trigger. It is your career at stake. So what should you be looking for in your boss? According to the HBR article, "If Your Boss Could Do Your Job, You're More Likely to Be Happy at Work" you have to make sure that your boss meets the following three key attributes: 1) Can your boss do your job? 2) Did your boss work his or her way up through merit? 3) Do workers think whether your boss is technically competent? Technical competence is not only crucial for your future boss but even the CEO of companies. If you look at the top five tech companies, they all have CEOs who got to the top mainly because of their technical competence, which includes Tim Cook of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sundar Pichai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. To become an outstanding business leader, they all added leadership skills, communication skills and business acumen to get to the pinnacle of the corporate world. The authors of the HBR article write that in their study of 35,000 randomly selected employees what stood out was that "many factors can matter for happiness at work – type of occupation, level of education, tenure, and industry are also significant, for instance – they don’t even come close to mattering as much as the boss’s technical competence." Also, they discovered in their study that when employees got a new boss who was technically competent, the employees' job satisfaction increased. When you think about it, this study makes much sense. Employees are happiest when they make meaningful progress in their work as was pointed out in the book The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. Their research "revealed that the best way to motivate people, day in and day out, is by facilitating progress—even small wins." I believe having a competent technical boss can help you make progress since she is a resource readily available to assist employees. You must consider this situation before accepting a job offer since companies don't have resources readily available as they tend to be very lean with their staffing. I can attest to this since when I worked at companies, the projects that gave me the most satisfaction were those that were managed by a competent technical boss who could help me make progress with my projects. On the contrary, I was very frustrated working for a boss who was not technically competent who played favorites in securing resources. In some cases, I lost motivation that resulted in my leaving the company. Next time when you are interviewing for a job, you have to consider that your job satisfaction and career success may depend on your boss being technically competent who also must possess outstanding leadership skill and excellent business acumen. So don't join the company because you have heard a lot of good things in the media, but also make sure your boss is both good and technically competent. You rarely get a chance to straighten out your career so be careful. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach and a student. He has worked as a programmer, a technical sales consultant and an alliance manager before reinventing himself. He volunteers for Hire Heroes USA mentoring and coaching experienced military veterans get executive-level jobs. He is the author of Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective With Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the free speech checklist and the free speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. I will add you to my newsletter list so I can provide you tips, techniques, and insights on speaking and other related subjects every two weeks. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com. |
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