I recently hired a graphic designer to create a direct marketing piece for one of my clients.  The designer came up with a nice first draft, which I forwarded to my client so we could review them at the same time.

My client was out of town, so I went ahead and emailed my first comments to the designer.  (“Nice color — how about a font change here?  Oh, and here’s some more copy.  And can you try it with the other proposed logo?”)  You know — I figured that the sooner we started getting her changes, the faster the whole process would go.

Two days later, the client got their comments to me.  (“Great font.  And here’s yet more copy.  And here’s a correction on one line of the original copy.  And can we try a version without the logo?”)

I emailed the comments on to the designer.  And a few moments later I realized that the client  had a typo in their correction.  So I emailed the designer with a fix to that typo (and I labeled the email “high priority” so she’d read it before implementing the client’s erroneous change).    And of course I sent it quickly.  You know, about ten minutes before I remembered that I needed to request yet one more tweak…

Only one thing kept that graphic designer from shooting me — she charges by the hour.

Lesson: no one benefits from having a hundred tweaks requested one-at-a-time as they occur to the tweaker.  My ADD wanted me to deal with each idea as soon as it hit me, and maybe that would have been fine.  But I didn’t need to make the designer deal with each idea as soon as it hit me.  I could have collected them bit by bit into one document, which I could have emailed when it was complete, after I organized and reviewed it.  I’ll do better next time — I promise!

“Don’t Sell Past the Close”

– some anonymous smart person

This isn’t just for salesmen pitching product.  It’s for any executive whose job includes persuading others to do things.

When someone agrees to whatever you’re persuading them to do, stop talking.  Stop giving them more reasons it’s a good idea.  Stop asking them to do it.  They’ve already said yes! What will you gain by talking more?  Probably nothing important.

Meanwhile, there’s a risk you might derail their “yes”.  How? Here are four different ways:

1. you might give them new facts that point them back toward “no”.
2. you might look so eager that they think they can talk you down on price.
3. your lack of realizing that you’ve already made the “sale” may make them doubt your competence and the value of whatever you’re pitching
4. your extra bandwidth demand might just annoy them. I think I’ll stop, now.

Do you have a to-do list with items more than one month old?

Try this for today: find one item you know you’re not going to do, or that you at least know you can live without.  And scratch it out.

I bet your mind will thank you.

Back in the 70s I read a book of study tips for college students.  “If you’re having troubled staying on task with an assignment, promise yourself a reward — like going out for a hamburger — as soon as you get your work done.”

How does this technique sound for a modern executive with attention deficit disorder?  On the one hand, if the promise of a little treat helps us get the job done, great!  We get the job done!  On the other hand, if we make a habit of using extrinsic and unrelated rewards (like hamburgers, or a half-hour of television, or a trip to the beach) to get ourselves to complete a task, will we gradually erode our internal ability to stick with tasks for the simple reason that they’re important?

I suspect that the “hamburger” technique (like hamburgers themselves) are fine if used sparingly, but not as a habit.  In any case, if you use this technique, what’s your “hamburger”?

Who wants a blowgun and some Ritalin darts?

When I wander off topic during meetings with my colleague Geoff, he puts two fists to his mouth, points them at my neck and goes, “Phoompf!”

It’s good for co-workers to help keep each other out of ADD trouble.  Geoff shoots me with his blowgun.  I interrupt one of our other colleagues when he interrupts one of our clients.  And I ask my own clients, “If I get on a roll and can’t stop talking about something that isn’t useful, please tell me so I can stop.”

Just remember to deliver the “hey, let’s stay on track” message in a way that doesn’t cause more harm than good.  Get agreement in advance that you’re going to do this for each other, so nobody gets surprised or angry.  And do it with tact and maybe a little humor. Phoompf!

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Photo credit: Isaac Councill, blowgun demonstration in Peru. Copyright 2006. Used with permission.

Good breathing helps calm the mind and allows us to stay present during difficult moments when our attention might want to flee.

We knew that already, but in case you wanted a reminder written in heavy-duty scientific language, see the abstract, below. Now loosen that necktie!

Mechanisms of mindfulness: Emotion regulation following a focused breathing induction
Joanna J. Arch and Michelle G. Craske, University of California, Los Angeles.

Abstract

The current study investigated whether a 15 min recorded focused breathing induction in a normal, primarily undergraduate population would decrease the intensity and negativity of emotional responses to affectively valenced picture slides and increase willingness to remain in contact with aversive picture slides. The effects of the focused breathing induction were compared with the effects of 15 min recorded inductions of unfocused attention and worrying. The focused breathing group maintained consistent, moderately positive responses to the neutral slides before and after the induction, whereas the unfocused attention and worry groups responded significantly more negatively to the neutral slides after the induction than before it. The focusing breathing group also reported lower negative affect and overall emotional volatility in response to the post-induction slides than the worry group, and greater willingness to view highly negative slides than the unfocused attention group. The lower-reported negative and overall affect in response to the final slide blocks, and greater willingness to view optional negative slides by the focused breathing group may be viewed as more adaptive responding to negative stimuli. The results are discussed as being consistent with emotional regulatory properties of mindfulness.

in Behaviour Research and Therapy
Volume 44, Issue 12, December 2006, Pages 1849-1858

On executive behavior at strategic planning retreats, Dick Levin comments:

“I’ve observed that whenever you get a high-powered bunch of people together in a nice environment, away from all the mundane issues of running an organization, and ask them to consider futures, that setup presents an almost unavoidable temptation to bullshit. Bullshitting with intelligent people about where we ought to be ten years from today is a lot of fun, awfully stimulating, and sometimes unavoidable. Granted, we are at the retreat to do creative dreaming. But the difference between creative dreaming and bullshit is focus. So publish an outline [before the retreat starts], focus sharp, and knock off the bullshit.”

– Dick Levin in The Executive’s Illustrated Primer of Long-Range Planning(1981).

I was fortunate to take an MBA class from professor Levin just before he retired from teaching. He was an “old school” professor of management who leaned as much on data acquired from his own business experience as he did from data pulled from carefully designed surveys or government and industry reports.

The Executive’s Illustrated Primer of Long-Range Planning is not essential ADDexec reading, but it does a nice job of reminding executives in 2007 that not everything in business is about formulas. In fact, executives with attention deficit disorder might appreciate how Levin affirms the sometimes-neglected functions of intuition, observation, and not doing things the same way as everybody else (while also making sure you’re looking at the whole picture). Many of the book’s details are no longer true or relevant — business has changed since 1981* — but it’s a worthwhile read if you like incisive commentary on topics that newer texts sometimes ignore. Amazon has used copies of The Executive’s Illustrated Primer of Long-Range Planning from $0.01 plus S&H.

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*context: the National Institute of Mental Health had cataloged and named “attention deficit disorder” only one year prior!

‘Be Quick But Don’t Hurry.’ By that, I meant make a decision, take action; decide what you’re going to do and do it. Keep this word of caution in mind: ‘Failure to act is often the biggest failure of all’.

– John Wooden, from his website CoachJohnWooden.com

“Be Quick But Don’t Hurry” is usually quoted by itself, without extra explanation from the coach.  For the ADDexec, the “don’t hurry” part may be the most important part of Wooden’s advice.  But the full explanation has value, too.  Especially when unmanaged attention fails to engage the gears of action.

Coach Wooden is widely regarded as the best coach in the history of college basketball. After winning ten national championships at UCLA, Wooden has also emerged as a voice of leadership and ethical behavior. His most-frequently quoted advice is the title of his new book.

Available at Amazon: Be Quick But Don’t Hurry

From A messy desk undermines your career, by Penelope Trunk

When it comes to projecting a positive image through your personal space, some areas are more easily managed than others. A messy desk is tough. If you keep a messy desk, it’s probably inadvertent, and you will have to change behavior in order to clean up your act. It’s worth the effort, though. “There is a cultural bias toward orderliness,” says Eric Abrahamson, professor at Columbia University Business School, “Messiness is considered bad.” Kelly Crescenti, an Illinois-based career coach, concurs: “When people have a clean desk it looks like they get things done and they are productive.”

You cannot really know how productive someone is by looking at their desk, says Julie Morgenstern organizing guru and author of Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work. But she concedes that “the image issue is giant.” So even if you can find everything you need on your pile-laden desk, clean it if you want to look good. Start with a filing system, and Crescenti advises that at minimum, you take the last fifteen minutes of every day to actually use the system and clean things up a little before you go home.

But as with all image management advice, don’t go overboard: Everything in moderation. Abrahamson provides a postmodern defense of the messy desk: “Messiness is related to creativity because it tends to juxtapose things that don’t normally go together.”

Penelope Trunk is a columnist at the Boston Globe and Yahoo! Finance, with a witty and often wise blog at Brazen Careerist — Advice at the Intersection of Work and Life.

For a few ADDexec relevant posts at the Brazen Careerist, check out:

• Make life more stable with more frequent job changes,
• Good news for job hoppers: Frequent change maintains passion, and
• 10 tips for time management in a multitasking world

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Image: ADDexecutive.com

This tip, like many at the ADDexecutive, sounds like common sense. It is. But for adults with attention deficit disorder, it’s common sense that often needs reminding.

I once did some consulting work for a small health care provider that was in big trouble. They had lost most of their contracts, their management team was crumbling, and their past due bills were piling up.

Though the odds were long, they had half a chance of saving the company if they focused 100% of their attention on nailing two important contracts: one with a prospective client, and another with a necessary partner. Instead, the owners spent half their time on CYA* tasks, interviewing accountants and attorneys that they might need if they had to declare bankruptcy, and looking at cheaper office space that they could move into if they didn’t win a contract with the new client.

Do these people sound crazy to you? Perhaps a little stupid? Just stupid and crazy enough to have earned two PhDs. and an MBA, and to have run a longtime mental health care practice. It can easily happen to the best of us. That’s why we need the reminders.

And you can guess what happened.

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*”cover your ass”