Lori’s Latest: Why don’t asthma patients take their meds, even when they’re free?

Author: Lori Hamilton

  • Ways Companies Say Thank You to Workers

    Ways Companies Say Thank You to Workers

    Below are extra special & effective ways to go about saying thanks to your staff.

    Harvard Business Review 8/7/2020

    As the ongoing public health crisis has metastasized into an economic slowdown, it’s difficult for many corporations to retain and reward their people. Many firms aren’t in the position to give their employees large annual bonuses. As the former CEO of CitiMortgage and now the CEO of Caliber Home Loans, I have seen how spot bonuses can be an effective alternative: We recently paid spot bonuses to almost all our employees to reward them for their diligent work in a tumultuous year. Indeed, companies can use a spot bonus like a scalpel to stimulate feelings of satisfaction among employees, incentivize group behaviors, and build a stronger sense of solidarity. Read more here…

    A spot bonus is typically paid “on the spot” to individuals or a group of employees (and sometimes an organization’s entire workforce) for a specific behavior, action, or result. Because of their targeted nature, they tend to be a smaller amount of money than the annual incentive reward. In my experience, they typically range from a couple of hundred dollars to a few thousand. According to research done by PayScale in 2018, these are the second most commonly used form of variable pay, tied with employee referral bonuses, after annual individual bonuses.

    There are many reasons you should consider using this type of compensation at your organization.

    There’s a scientific basis to this point: In a 2001 study, neuroscientists discovered that the anticipation of monetary rewards generates a significant amount of activation in the nucleus accumbens, which is part of the “reward circuitry” of the brain. In the same study, participants self-reported that they felt happier at the prospect of monetary gain.

    If your goal is to reward employees, then try engaging their reward circuitry more often. Instead of waiting an entire year to pay a bonus, consider introducing bonuses that employees can anticipate more frequently, such as recurring spot bonuses which are based on individual performance but also tied to the performance of the company. Not only will it more regularly stimulate “satisfied” brain activity among employees, but it will also help form a mental association between the results of the firm and individual performance.  This may create more work for HR or your financial group, but your leadership team could determine the spot bonus pool for the year in advance and empower managers to allocate them accordingly throughout the year.

    Second, a spot bonus may improve team performance, especially if recipients are encouraged to spend this money on others. Because of the pandemic, many people are working longer hours and often doing so in isolation. Yet there is an increasing amount of research that indicates that interpersonal relationships can serve as a source of satisfaction at work. In a 2013 study, salespeople at a pharmaceutical company were divided into groups, those who received personal bonuses and those who got prosocial bonuses who were encouraged to spend these bonuses on others.

    Those who received prosocial bonuses spent more money buying gifts for each other like lunches for colleagues. These teams outperformed those that didn’t receive the prosocial bonuses. “When organizations give employees the opportunity to spend money on others … both the employees and the company can benefit, with increased happiness and job satisfaction and even improved team performance,” conclude the authors of the study. These findings suggest that you could pay prosocial spot bonuses that are meant to be gifted, in an effort to boost performance.

    Third, a spot bonus is an opportunity to demonstrate your organization’s priorities. Don’t just make it about the money. It’s not enough to only remit payments. You also have to explain how these bonuses are being paid because the firm is meeting its objectives. When my firm paid spot bonuses to almost all of our employees last year, we held an offsite in which we addressed the state of our business, described various transformation initiatives that were currently underway, and answered employee questions. Giving such a bonus presents an opportunity because you will have everyone’s attention, and they’re more likely to be open to what you and other leaders have to say. This is the time to share your vision, address queries, and inspire action.

    In this period of pandemic and recession, a spot bonus is a way to help employees through difficult times, as well as boost performance and morale.

    Spot Bonuses

    Extraordinary achievement tied to a major goal. It’s worth crowing about, and that’s just what a Spot Bonus Award does. Spot Bonuses provide recognition for employees who take their game to a whole new level.

    The monetary value of a Spot Bonus Award varies based on the achievement. In general, the range is $300 to $3,000, which may include a departmental contribution.

    Insperity

    Employee recognition ideas:52 epic ways to give rewards

    Bonusly

    65 Creative Employee Reward Ideas

    Vantage Circle 10/6/2020

    33 Amazing Employee Appreciation Ideas

    RevUnit 4/8/2020

    How (and why) to Effectively Thank Your Employees: Employees who feel appreciated are more engaged—and organizations with highly engaged employees are 21% more profitable, according to a Gallup survey. Read more here…

     Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM)

    How do you Say Thank-You’s to Employees

    Lighthouse: Leadership & Management

    How to thank your employees in 5 simple, effective ways

    Great Places to Work Institute

    6 Effective Ways to Show Employees you Appreciate Them

  • October Reading and Watching

    October Reading and Watching

    In a recent newsletter, I wrote about self-care. Now, I’d like to talk about creating a great working environment through TRUE collaboration. Not, “I cc’d you on the email and invited you to the meeting” collaboration,” but rather, the kind of deep collaboration that turns “my project” into our “our achievement.”

    Being deeply connected to our peers, colleagues, and employees are always important, especially when we all have to work a little harder to stay connected.

    Helpful resources The Art True Collaboration piece…

    Habits of Great Managers

    Insights on Organizational Behavior – from the real world!

    Making things Better by Making Them Worse – a guide to dealing with negative people

    Other resources and why I use them

    First Break All the Rules – a quantitative study that shows what makes a good workplace (spoiler, it’s the same 10 things around the world). Key motivators are seeing a higher purpose in what you do, having a clear direction on your responsibilities, AND the tools to achieve them, as well as having someone care about your personality at work. A good primer for any leader.

    Delivering Happiness – a bird’s eye view on how Zappos created arguably the best customer service culture on the planet.

    Quiet – THE best book that was ever written about introverts’ power and value and how to tap into that power with your team. A MUST READ for every leader.

    Brené Brown – the authority on courage and vulnerability. Her whip-smart unassailable facts are combined with homespun honest anecdotes that have illuminated key ideas and continue to inspire me.

    The Person You Mean to Be – order this now – the book is by an excellent team of great thinkers who created this guide to overcome bias and be the person you mean to be at work.

    Making things better by making them worse.

    Good luck!

  • September Reading and Watching

    September Reading and Watching

    What I’m reading –  just for laughs

    • Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan is honestly one of the funniest books I ever read. The title comes from the first thing one of his sons wrote on the family whiteboard. Sample joke: “People ask me what my favorite ride was at Disneyworld. The train leaving the park.”
    • Hyperbole and a Half, by Allie Brosh who Ad Age named as one of the 50 Most Influential Creative Figures in the World. Dogs, corn, cake, depression, cartoons. Just read it. I’ve given this book as a gift many times, and even children as young as 8 find it funny. It’s silly, insightful, and full of hilarious drawings.
    • Laugh Out Loud Jokes for Kids. Having you ever spent time in the back seat of a mini-van trading jokes with a nine-year-old? If not, you should! I highly recommend making kids (and yourself) laugh as a stress-relieving pastime. This book is chock full of corny and delightful jokes to make even the most cynical inner child smile.

    What I’m reading – food for thought

    These are some books that have helped me over the years. If you or a loved one are experiencing depression, anxiety, or other issues, please seek help from a mental health professional. There are lots of affordable options and even apps. You would never walk on a broken leg without getting it looked at, right? The same thing is true for your mind.

    1 out of 3 Americans now says that the COVID situation has impacted their mental health*. If you are one of them, please do yourself a favor and get some support. *National Center for Health Statistics. 

    • Feeling Good. The New Mood Therapy This book was prescribed to me by a therapist when I was depressed but I find that anyone can benefit from his rationally based methods. See pages 42 and 43 of the paperback version for a list of common thought patterns that cause anxiety or depression, such as All-or-Nothing Thinking, Disqualifying the Positive, Magnification (Catastrophizing) and Emotional Reasoning. Our thoughts create a chain reaction in our endocrine and lymphatic symptoms that lead directly to the physical responses of being depressed and/or anxious. This approach has an 80% recovery rate when used in a professional setting.  LOTS of great tools and tests to help you find your way through the maze.
    • The Time Cure. Do you remember the classic Stanford Prison Experiment that had to be stopped because students were treating each other so badly? The graduate student who initiated and then stopped that study is now in his 80’s and has spent a lifetime tracking what undoes trauma and creates happiness and people behaving kindly. Guess what? You can change your mood and your body chemistry, by changing the story you tell yourself about yourself. When you look at the past, are you a victim or an overcomer of obstacles? When you look at the future, are you hopeful or anxious? When you look at today, do you find fault with yourself, or do you ask yourself what you did today that only you could have done? (Be kind to a child, let someone else feel important, made the world a better place in some tiny way). This approach has been shown to cure even those most difficult cases of PTSD. It’s worth a read for sure! 

    What I’m watching – inspiring stories

    When I’m feeling stressed and responsible for things I can’t control, a good movie with someone overcoming the odds. Here are two of my favorites. What are some of yours?

    Akeelah and the Bee (available on Amazon Prime, Hulu, and many others).  A young girl who loves spelling but is ridiculed at school.  She finds an unexpected mentor is a retired teacher (played by the inimitable Lawrence Fishburne) to help take her to the top of her potential.

    Shawshank Redemption. “Get busy living or get busy dying,”  is a quote from the movie that sticks with me. The writing is beautiful, the acting is lovely, and I’m a sucker for a happy ending.

  • Staying Creative in Crisis

    Staying Creative in Crisis

    Last month we talked about how this particular moment is ripe for business transformation. We’re all in the middle of it, which can be both exciting and daunting.  As business leaders, we want to serve our customers and employees and the world in meaningful, valuable ways, but how do you stay creative in finding solutions when the world is crashing all around you?

    The biggest obstacles to staying creative in crisis for me are fear, that brain lock that comes when I’m under pressure to DO something now, fatigue, I’ve been working on the same problem for ages and I just feel burned out, or lack of focus, how do I pay attention to things when I’m feely foggy?

    Here are some key tips that I use on a regular basis. I hope you’ll find them useful as well.

    5 minutes or less

    • Brain re-set. It’s hard to stay focused when your brain is spinning on the same problem over and over again. Here are two techniques that will literally reset your brain.
      • Walk around the room touching things, calling them things they’re not for 1 minute. This will short circuit your logical thinking, allowing intuitive creativity to rise to the surface.
      • List 10 things that have nothing to do with each other. Great to do with a partner who can call out “nope, that one relates to another one!” This exercise will cause your brain to look for outside-the-box solutions.
    • When in doubt, let a breath out. Most people try to relax with breathing by forcing breath in. The problem with that is that when we are tense or scared, we hold our breath so forcing breath in doesn’t really work. Let your breath out. ALL the way out, then wait for the fresh oxygen to come back in. It will relax your body and your mind.
    • Go read jokes. I’m serious. Good jokes are insights formed into humor. If you want to feel better and think differently quickly, go spend 5 minutes reading jokes. Even kid’s jokes will help.

    More than 5 minutes

    • Take a walk. Andrew Weill has long asserted that people just do better when they take a 10-minute walk every day. Looking around you, moving your body, breathing the air – all these things will help calm you so that you can go back to your work with fresh eyes… Stop and look at, feel or smell nature of some kind, even it’s just produce at the grocery store.
    • Dance party Put on some music that makes you want to dance for 5 minutes or more.
    • Go play with a child or animal, full throttle, all your attention.
    • Rest. Lay down and breathe for 10-20 minutes.  Invite your body to untwist, to unfurl, to expand. Ask it gently.  See if you can allow yourself to be supported by the bed or floor, let go of the need to “do” anything, and just be present, using only the energy you need.
    • Explore inspiring stories or ideas. What do you love just because you love it?  Go spend 30 minutes on that! Do you love cooking? Go watch or read about an inspiring chef? Do you love how things work? Give yourself a deep dive into the mechanics of something you enjoy or the history of a person, invention or idea.
    • Tap into brainstorming thought-starters. A lot of times, the new ideas can come from simply asking a better question, here are some.
      • Day in the life. What is a typical day in your audience’s life? How can your product or service make their live BETTER? How could it make it WORSE?
      • If the problem you are trying to solve had a superhero, what would that superhero be called? What would his/her superpower be? What part of that can you use for your solution?
      • Follow the path. A famous landscaper was hired to do the landscape for a college campus. All he did was plant grass. GRASS???!  Six months later, he came back and landscaped around the foot trails in the grass. What is your customer already doing that you can support or be part of? If you don’t know, ask them how they get new ideas, have them tell you a story about their day or business – what makes them feel successful? Not successful? How can you tap into that?

    Staying Creative as a Team

    Let’s say you and your team have been grinding on a problem for a while, or maybe even just recently but everyone’s exhausted. How do you shake things loose? Here are a few lightning-fast exercises you can do with your team.

    Two things are key: fun and silliness. It’s important to give people permission to misbehave with their ideas so they don’t get locked in perfectionism.

    Feel free to have the team share between exercises or all at once at the end.

    The goal is to come up with the MOST ideas, so you have the best chance to have GOOD ideas. Create first, then evaluate.

     Super quick thought starters – to be done in groups of 1-3 people (no more!)

    • Best ideas. For this issue, what is the BEST thing we can do now? (1 minute to come up with as many ideas as you can – the highest number of ideas gets a prize – candy, toy, something else, you pick.)
    • Worst ideas. Channel your evil twin. If you wanted to create the WORST possible ideas for this issue, what would you do?  (1 minute to come up with these – reward the worst ideas!)
    • Opposite of worst ideas. Pick your stinkiest, most awful ideas. What are some ideas that would be the OPPOSITE of those bad ideas? (1 minute!)
    • Pick an innovator from any field – living or dead. Once each team has picked an innovator, that person is now your new leader. What would he/she do? (2 minutes for ideas here). What parts of that could we actually do?
    • Optional: 4th You are a member of Mrs. Johnson’s 4th-grade class. You visit your company or experience your product/service. How do you make fun of it on the bus ride home? Now Mrs. Johnson has assigned you the task of solving this issue. What do you come up with?  What part of that could you actually use?
  • August Reading and Watching

    August Reading and Watching

    Reading…

    This month I’m focusing on inspiring stories of others who have been creative in their field, forging new paths that we now take for granted. I find that kind of story super helpful for the times we are in because we are all figuring out the future together. Hope you enjoy these!

    • Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris.  This month’s theme is all about staying creative in crisis, so what better way than to have a whole book of 2-4 page summaries of great advice from people who are world-class achievers in their field? I always find that looking at best practices from outside my field so helpful in rejuvenating my creative spirit. It’s uplifting as well as enlightening, and the book is chock full of quotes and easy-to-implement recommendations. I’m reading it cover to cover, but you may decide to pick and choose your own adventure!
    • At Work by Annie Leibovitz. When Annie Leibovitz arrived at Rolling Stone magazine she was 24, working in a male-dominated world where the photographer was seen as an appendix to the real journalist, the writer. Through her kindness, charm, humility, and willingness to learn, she carved out a whole new role as a photojournalist, becoming one of the first people to have a photo spread in Rolling Stone that WAS the story.  What I find helpful here is her creativity in exploring both a new role and a new type of photography being on the road with bands. There was no blueprint for success, she created it. And like all new paths, it wasn’t always smooth. A good reminder for the times we are in.

    Watching…

    Is there anything more uplifting than seeing how someone created or reinvented a path? When you see the obstacles and tradition-based roadblocks that the people in these series faced, it’s a marvel that they kept ongoing. For me, staying creative in tough times is all about continuing to believe that that big vision you have CAN come true, taking those steps in the right direction – regardless of what others say – and being willing to pivot is key. It’s also nice to see a story about the messy truth behind achievement.

    • Chef’s Table – Netflix. A young black girl grows up in Savannah where her grandmother gives her the most amazing food to eat. Her family moves to New York to get away from racial tension. She goes to college, as her parents insisted, then takes the plunge and goes to cooking school in France. Returning to NYC, she works for some of the top chefs in the city. Then she gets offered a chance to be ahead chef in Savannah. She jumps at the chance to turn the old bus depot- once a place of racial segregation – into a fine dining place.  At first, she struggles to find her voice, relying on the techniques she’s learned in France and New York.  Then one day, she goes to a local cafeteria and is immediately swept away by tasting “her grandma’s food.”  She changes the restaurant to be all about taking heritage recipes, ingredients, and cooking techniques from the African American community and elevating that.  In 2019, Bailey was awarded a James Beard Award as best chef of the southeast. https://thegreyrestaurant.com/about-us/
    • Mindhunter – HBO. Before CSU and Criminal Minds, there was the real story of how the FBI’s behavioral science unit was created. This show is based on the book, Mindhunter, Inside The FBI’s Serial Crime Unit, which tells the story of how we went from assuming that criminals are just “bad people” to understanding that environment, trauma, and early upbringing make such a difference in how people turn out, and to creating dynamic tools to better analyze, predict and profile criminal behavior. It wasn’t an easy road, mistakes and misunderstandings were encountered along the way. What part of your world is your re-inventing? What old paradigms can you reframe? I hope you’ll find kindred spirits in creating a new solution by following these stores.
  • July Reading and Watching

    July Reading and Watching

    Reading…

    As I’m thinking about kindness in the workplace, I went back to these three books that combine hard research with gentle persuasive techniques on how to be a better manager, how to make the workplace, and the world a better place.

    • Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t – This book shows the clear correlation between management style and financial performance. The key finding is that leaders who focus on their teams, making others successful, are far better at managing their organizations to financial excellence. While leaders who focus on themselves, do much more poorly. Bottom line: listen first, take responsibility for yourself when things go wrong, and share the credit with others when things go right.
    • First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently – This book is a classic, required reading for my students at Columbia, NYU, and Pace University. It’s a global quantitative study on what makes a great workplace, and the impact when those factors are present. Surprisingly, what makes a great workplace are the same 10 things around the world – understanding the higher purpose of your work, having a clear direction, and the tools/resources you need to do that work, feeling that someone at work cares about you as a person. Give it read to up your game as a team leader and manager.
    • Dream Teams – This book explores what makes some teams work and some not. I have personally experienced this when I worked on a bank merger between Wachovia and First Atlanta Bank. In Wachovia’s culture, you write everything down because it shows transparency, integrity, and attention to detail; in First Atlanta’s culture, you only write down every detail if you’re getting ready to get someone else in trouble. Guess what happened when the two cultures merged? Dream Teams shows that the key to team success, particularly integrated teams (which is every team right now) is intellectual humility. Being willing to assume that you don’t know and can learn from others. That is the key to listening, collaborating, and seeing and evoking the best in others.

    Watching…

    One of my favorite ways to lift my spirits is to be inspired by the work of others. I hope you’ll find these ideas inspiring for you as well!

    • American Masters: Toni Morrison – Before winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, Tony Morrison was a single mom, a top editor for Random House, and an author. In the ’60s, as a black woman in New York. When she wrote The Bluest Eye, she asked the question “why do we assume the reader is white?” She also noted that the insidious nature of bias – any kind of bias – is not just what it does to society or to the people directly receiving that bias, the poison gets worse when we assume that it’s true ourselves. The Bluest Eye was inspired by a memory Toni had as a child of a 9-year old friend who said she didn’t believe in God anymore because he wouldn’t give her blue eyes. What had to happen to that little girl at age 9 to believe that she was not lovable, not OK, not acceptable because of the color of her eyes?
    • American Masters: Miles Davis – Did you know that Miles Davis attended The Juilliard School by day as he was inventing Cool Jazz at night in clubs on 52nd Street with Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Dizzy Gillespie? Me neither. Imagine being that talented, from a small town, and taking the musical world by storm. It wasn’t until he went to Paris that he experienced racial equality. Still, at the height of his success, he was arrested while standing under a marquee with his name on it. His alleged crime? Smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk in New York City. If you ever feel that life’s obstacles are too much, and you can’t continue being creative, look no further than the life of Miles Davis who stayed hopeful, productive, and generous to young people all his life.
    • Hamilton on Disney Plus  – I know everyone’s watching Hamilton these days. Here’s what I love about it.
      • First, Lin-Manuel Miranda writes in the spirit of Shakespeare – pop culture references galore. “Here comes the general!” is from a General Auto Insurance commercial.  “Immigrants, we get the job done” is from an old Marine’s ad. And “you’ve got to be carefully taught” is from a song about racism from the musical, South Pacific.
      • If you don’t know rap well, it may take you 20 minutes or so to get used to the language. Stick with it. It’s worth it. Even if you can’t understand the words, note the rhythms. Like Shakespeare, each character has his or her own rhythm. Many of them inspired by rap stars – Hercules Mulligan is modeled after Busta Rhymes.
      • And Miranda uses internal rhyming and alliteration to create patterns that show each character’s nature. Lafayette uses mottled rap because he’s not a native speaker of English. Jefferson’s rap seems behind the times because he’s been out of the country.
      • Another reason to be impressed by Hamilton is, it’s better than the piece itself. Lin-Manuel Miranda did something that no other Broadway producer I know has done. He shared the profits with the original team – cast, director, musical arranger. Usually, those folks get paid a salary for their time but don’t reap the rewards of a show’s success.
      • In addition, Miranda received a MacArthur grant that allowed him to provide 50,000 New York City students the chance to see the show on Broadway for free. It also set the stage for classrooms to use the curriculum to teach the show and help kids create their own versions of the songs.
      • Finally, Miranda has been a tireless worker and advocate for charity – from worker relief during COVID to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, even purchasing a bookstore that was once a haven for theater writers and setting the stage of the next generation.
  • How to Brainstorm Remotely

    How to Brainstorm Remotely

    As many of you know, I’ve been facilitating creative sessions for quite a while. For those that don’t know, I have over 20 years of experience across many industries working with companies such as Google, Samsung, ConAgra, MetLife, Chase Manhattan, TIAA, The Home Depot, and many more. Our work has helped generate over $3 billion in incremental business.

    Here are some steps on how to brainstorm remotely:

    STEP ONE

    Start the meeting with a group review of whatever topic you are going to brainstorm on. It’s important for everyone to have a common understanding of the lay of the land – the product, the audience, the problem you are solving, whatever it may be.

    STEP TWO

    Create a series of questions to be answered in smaller groups. The most efficient size group for creating ideas is 1-3 people. I recommend creating separate zoom “rooms” for everyone to break out together.

    Each group should have a specific focus. Maybe it’s the audience, maybe it’s the problem you’re solving or the product area you want to explore. Come up with 3-4 ideas. That way you can have 3-4 small groups, more if you like. You can always have more than one group focus on the focus area.

    STEP THREE

    Reward each group with the NUMBER of ideas they come up with and time the results (1-3 minutes). Encourage everyone to say “yes and” to ideas. You never know which supposedly “bad idea” will lead to a good one. NO evaluating of ideas while you generate them. Give prizes (I’m serious – candy, toys, something fun and send it to the team members after the meeting. Make sure everyone gets something – even a wind-up toy. It will bring a smile to their face AND it will remind them of the meeting!)

    Examples of questions for ideation. After each breakout group, have the small groups share some of their ideas and have one person capture them all to send to the team later in the meeting.

    • Best and worst
      • What are the BEST ideas off the top of your head now?
      • What are the WORST ideas to totally RUIN your effort now?
      • Now, what are the opposite of the worst ideas?
    • Day in the life
      • What’s a day in the life of your audience?  What’s a good day? A bad day?
      • How could your product or service make a good day better?
      • How could your product or service make the bad day worse?
    • Projection ideas
      • If your product or service were a superhero, what would his/her name be? What would their superpower be?
      • Imagine you are in Mrs. Johnson’s 4th-grade class. You go visit your company, product, or service on a field trip. How do you make fun of the company n the bus ride home? Now, what ideas would your 4th’ grade self have for your product or service?
      • Think of an innovator (musician, technology, writer, artist, any kind of inventor).  If that innovator were your chief marketing officer, what would THAT person do for your product or service?
      • After these ideas, ask “what part of these ideas could you actually use?”

    STEP FOUR

    Get consensus. Once you’ve got all the ideas done, email everyone in the group the list of ideas. You might also do this on a quick online survey. People will pick their top 3-5 ideas. Guess what? INSTANT consensus!

    STEP FIVE

    Next steps: if you have time, brainstorm on the ultimate outcome, the ideal future, Then talk about how that could fail, What are the obstacles? How can we overcome these obstacles? What are the first, easiest steps to take toward success?

    Good luck!

    Lori Hamilton, Founder

    Prosperity Productions, Inc.

  • Questions about becoming a thought leader in your industry?

    Questions about becoming a thought leader in your industry?

    I was happy to provide a response to the question, “5 Things You Should Do To Become a Thought Leader In Your Industry,” in a series in Authority Magazine.

    “Authority Magazine, a Medium publication, is devoted to sharing interesting “thought leadership interview series” featuring people who are authorities in Business, Film, Sports and Tech. We use interviews to draw out stories that are both empowering and actionable.”

  • Things you can do in this moment

    Things you can do in this moment

    What a time we are living in, right? I know. I’m here in New York City, which is very different than normal.

    We are all in the same boat. You may be feeling scared, anxious, wondering what you can do.

    There are still things you may want to do. Over the past two weeks, our team has been interviewing people in B2B as well as consumers, and we’ve heard the following insights about what your customers want to hear from you during COVID-19.

    Communicate

    1. Communicate that you care. A simple message that you care about your customers is welcome. If you are helping others, let them know that two.
    2. Provide relevant tips on things people can do. People want to feel like there is something they can do, something else they can focus on besides this crisis.
    3. Keep it short. People are overwhelmed. A simple message of caring is fine.
    4. Need interaction? My team and I are here to help you think through and navigate this moment. We are all in this together.

    Contribute

    1. Our team is contributing to non-profits that are helping others and paying salaries, even with no income. If you are doing the same, let us know.
    2. With COVID-19 forcing everyone to innovate, now is a great opportunity to find out-of-the-box ideas for how you can help your employees, charities, and others.

    Continue your work

    1. I was interviewing financial managers the day Lehman fell. Throughout the day, we asked our respondents, “why did you decide to come in for this interview?” The answer was always the same, “it’s nice to have something else to think about.”
    2. Your customers need you; the world needs you. In whatever way you can, continue doing that important work.
    3. If you want to talk through how to move forward, reach you, we’re happy to help you think through how to best connect with your customers during this tough time.

    We’ve updated this website with some new ways of explaining why insights matter, and I’ve written a couple of pieces you may find useful: What you can learn from performers about staying healthy.

    Some of you may also know that I have a personal website that is chock full of funny videos, photos, kid’s jokes, and positive acts of kindness called Positivity Pinata. We are loading up on examples of GOOD things people are doing during this rough time and I invite you to share what good things you have noticed.

    Please know that my heart and best wishes are with you. Stay safe out there! We’re in this together.

    Warmly,