From Where I Sit

Why I Am (Still) Excited About Christian Retail

Last Saturday, April 12, I spoke to Christian Retailers at our inaugural Open House event. It was video-taped, and you can watch it here if you are interested.

Because the file was so large, I had to upload it as five separate videos. The total length is 40 minutes or so. However, if you click on the link above, it will play all five videos as a YouTube “playlist,” with each video playing one after the other.

How to Shave Ten Hours Off Your Work Week

Almost everyone I know is working more time than they would like. That’s why a book like The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss has been such a big bestseller. This is a great book, but the promise is a little over the top. I don’t know of anyone, including Tim Ferriss, who really only works four hours.

But what if you could shave ten hours off your work week? In my opinion, that is much more do-able. Virtually anyone, with a little thought and effort can do it. Here’s how:

How Not to Use PowerPoint

I was just browsing SlideShare.net and stumbled across an excellent set of slides called, “Death by PowerPoint” by Alexei Kapterev. (Click on the image below to watch it.) He talks about why so many PowerPoint presentations are so bad. More importantly, he teaches you what you can do to make your presentations stand out.

If you use PowerPoint (or Apple Keynote) to make your presentations, this is well-worth a careful look. If you want even more help, I recommend two sites. The first is Presentation Zen. This is Garr Reynold’s site and one of my personal favorites. He doesn’t post that often, but it is always worth the wait. He also has a book by the same title coming out in January. I can’t wait to get my hands on it and have already pre-ordered it.

ICRS: Day Four

I never thought I’d be so glad to see Wednesday. ICRS continues though Thursday, but we were done early. I was ready to get home.

I ate breakfast with Mike Coleman, CEO of Integrity Media, the largest Christian music company in the world. I did not really know Mike until we met at last year’s convention. We bought Integrity Publishers from him, and he and I became friends through that transaction. I always enjoy being with him.

ICRS: Day Three

Tuesday at ICRS was tiring, but not nearly as exhausting as Monday. I think this was because I had the evening free, which was a first since I arrived. Ten hours non-stop sure beats fifteen.

My first appointment of the day was the “CEO Breakfast” hosted by CBA, the association for Christian Retail. I sat between Bob Munce, CEO of The Munce Group, a marketing group providing services to some 600 independent Christian retail outlets, and Marshall Gage, president of Kirkbride Bible Company, publisher of the famous Thompson Chain Reference Bible. Marshall and I spent most of our time chatting about the National Bible Association. (He is on the Board.)

ICRS: Day Two

Monday was another full but exhausting day at the International Christian Retail Show in Atlanta (ICRS). Thankfully, the cool weather is still with us. Although the humidity was quite high (85%), the temperature remained in the 70s and low 80s. Even Denver, where we’ve had the convention for the past two years, wasn’t this cool.

I had breakfast with Dale Hansen Bourke, former publisher of Today’s Christian Woman and now a writer for Religion News Service (RNS). She had not attended ICRS for several years but was back to do a story on trends in the Christian marketplace. We’ve known each other for 25 years. As Jerry Jenkins quipped last night at the Book Awards show, “we’ve known each other since the Dead Sea was merely sick.”

ICRS: Day One

Gail and I are attending the International Christian Retail Show (the show formerly known as “CBA”) in Atlanta this week. I always dread coming to Atlanta in July, but yesterday was unseasonably cool. Believe it or not, the temperature was in the mid-70s.

I played golf Sunday morning in the Global Publishers Alliance Invitational Golf Tournament. Every single golfing spot was filled. We even had a waiting list. We also raised $52,000 for GPA. This money goes toward helping small Christian publishers in other parts of the world.

Selling: The Inside Job

Usually, when people think about selling, they think of something that goes on outside the company. Sales reps call on external customers in an attempt to sell the company’s products or services. But what people often forget is the importance of selling people inside the company.

The truth is that internal selling is far more important than external selling. If you can’t sell the people inside your company on your product or service, you don’t have a chance of selling those outside the company.

Why? Because sooner or later you are dependent on other people inside your organization to get the message out. Before you can do that you have to get the message in. If they are not convinced, they can’t be convincing.

Question: How Can I Improve Communication Inside My Company?

Several weeks ago, I invited my readers to submit questions to me. I said that nothing is off limits. I will answer questions about leadership, publishing, business, my job as a CEO, your job, work/life balance, running—whatever. Since that time, I have received scores of questions. I will answer these as I have the opportunity. (If you have a question, you can send it to me at question4mike@gmail.com. Please only include one question per e-mail and keep it short. Thanks.)

A reader named Linda wrote, saying,

At the place where I work, the senior managers had a survey done of all the employees to see how morale was and where the shortcomings were. The biggest one was in communication. The employees felt that the managers weren’t communicating enough to tell them what was going on. Yet, here’s the other half of it. The managers were communicating, but it was evidently not in an effective manner for the employees.

If an email with news was sent out, it often got ignored or deleted; if an article was posted in the online magazine, no one read it; if there was a meeting, employees found reasons not to be there. We, in fact, had a major project that was in the newspapers and trades and had tons of daily promotion, and yet, when we had a open house on the project, we discovered that there were employees who had never heard of it!

The lack of communication within organizations is a frequent complaint. When I first came to Thomas Nelson, people used to joke, “We get more news about Thomas Nelson from The Tennessean [our local paper] than we do from our own management.” Or, “If I want to know what’s really going on at the Company, I call one of the agents.”

Four Ways Supervisors Frustrate Their Employees

For a couple of years now, I have hosted an event called “Pizza with the Prez.” Once a month or so, I have lunch with a different workgroup without their supervisors being present. This provides an opportunity for me to get unfiltered feedback. It’s one of my favorite activities.

The further you move up the chain-of-command, the less likely it is that you will get the truth. Information is filtered, spun, and managed. People either tell you what they want you to know or think you want to hear.

The Seven Levels of Preparation

“Hi. My name is Mike, and I’m a prepaholic.” If there was a support group for people who over-prepare, I would be a charter member.

Much of my job involves making presentations—to boards, banks, investors, authors, agents, customers, employees, vendors, the media—you name it. Each one of these represents an opportunity to make a “brand impression,” for myself and for the company I represent.

The Power of Questions

When I started out in my career, the key to success was having the right answers. If the boss had a question, he expected me to have the answer—or know where to get it. Those who advanced in their careers the quickest were seemingly the ones who had the most answers.

But as I began to ascend the corporate ladder, I discovered that the key to success began to shift. It became less and less about having the right answers and more and more about having the right questions.

In the age of Google, answers are the easy part. You can look up virtually anything and have the answer almost instantaneously. But this only happens if you know how to ask the right questions.

Project Management and Herding Cats

Sometimes in the midst of a project, you feel like you’re trying to “herd cats” to get everyone working together and moving in the same direction. If you’ve ever had that experience, you’re not alone.

Several years ago, the Fallon agency of Minneapolis created a television commercial called “Cat Herders” for computer giant EDS. It’s one of my all time favorite commercials. (If you are reading this post via e-mail, you will have to actually visit my blog and click on the YouTube link to make it work.)

What does cat herding have to do with project management? As it turns out, plenty. (That’s why this commercial is so funny.)

Seven Rules for More Effective Meetings

Today, I attended a very productive meeting. It was long, but we accomplished what we set out to do. We made significant decisions, established accountabilities, and left the meeting knowing exactly what was expected of us. I think everyone left feeling that it was a good use of time.

Unfortunately, too many corporate meetings don’t go this well. Often, they are a complete waste of time. But the good news is that they can be substantially improved by observing a few simple rules. Here is my list of seven rules for more effective meetings.

1. Establish hard edges. Good meetings start and end on time. When you start late, you inadvertently penalize the punctual and reward the tardy. This only make the problem worse rather than better. People get “trained” to come late because they know nothing significant will happen until well after the announced start time.
   
   When you finish late, you also frustrate participants. People are busy. Meetings that finish late domino into other meetings which must then also start late. Instead, we have to be as disciplined about our ending times as our beginning times. It’s amazing how much you can cover if you know you absolutely must finish on time.

The Thomas Nelson “Death Crawl”

This probably won’t be funny to anyone but the Thomas Nelson employees who attended our All Employee Meeting last week, but I thought I’d share it any way.

During my presentation, I played a clip from the movie, Facing the Giants. This is a great—albeit, low-budget—film about a football team in Georgia that just can’t seem to win any games.

The turning point in the film happens when the coach asks the team’s key player to do a “death crawl.” In this exercise, he has to crawl the length of the football field with another player on his back—blindfolded. The leader discovers that he can accomplish way more than he thinks he can. This becomes a sort of metaphor for what the team can do if they just try.

Well, our very own Greg Stielstra, Curt Harding, and Dave Schroeder decided that they would demonstrate a version of this: the marketing death crawl. All I can say is, “Guys, don’t quit your day jobs!”

By the way, the DVD of the movie started shipping yesterday. You can order it from a Christian retailer here or from Amazon.

Technorati Tags: goalsetting, leadership, movie clips, death crawl, facing the giants, thomas nelson

Five Rules for Better Presentations

Presentation software, like PowerPoint or Keynote, can be wonderful tools if used correctly. They can also be a dangerous distraction that interferes with communication rather than facilitating it.

In my role as CEO of Thomas Nelson, I sit through scores of presentations. Most of these are on PowerPoint. Most of them are done poorly.

I often think the presenter would be more compelling if he would ditch the presentation software and just speak. Because of this, I’ve even thought of outlawing presentation software in our company. But alas, It has become a staple of corporate life. It is the ubiquitous prop that attends every presentation.

My Favorite Presentation Resources

I don’t know about you, but our business runs on PowerPoint, and, to a lesser extent, Keynote presentation software.

For example, last week I attended an internal “Bible Summit” where Wayne Hastings made a very effective presentation using Keynote. The next day, I used Keynote myself to make a presentation at our All Employee Meeting. Later in the week, I attended a “Webinar” where the speaker used PowerPoint.

In fact, any more, it’s rare that I attend a meeting where the speaker or facilitator doesn’t use Keynote or Powerpoint. They have become ubiquitous in our organization. We use one or the other for Board meetings, author presentations, sales conferences, and other ad hoc meetings. To misquote a verse from the Gospel of Matthew, “where ever two or three are gathered, there is PowerPoint (or Keynote) in their midst.”

The problem is that most people using these presentation tools have not received adequate training. In fact, most have received no training whatsoever. As a result, too many people misuse the tool. This results in too many slides, too many bullets, and too much copy. Consequently, the tool often gets in the way. It becomes a hindrance to communication rather than an aid.

Building Airplanes—in the Air

At our All Employee meeting last week, I showed a video clip of an EDS commercial called “Airplanes.” It shows a crew building an airplane—while it is flying. This pretty much sums up how most of us are feeling this quarter.

The Fallon agency of Minneapolis produced the commercial. They also produced the EDS Cat Herders, EDS Running with the Squirrels, PBS Fearless Fish, and Sony Balls commercials.

This commercial is a fitting metaphor for our fourth fiscal quarter (the one we are currently in, ending March 31). We are pushing to finish the final quarter. Everyone is working hard to finish producing, selling, marketing, and shipping as much product as we can. We want to finish the year strong!

Ten Annoying Meeting Behaviors

I spend more hours in meetings than out. Perhaps you do, too. I guess it is just a fact of corporate life.

Over the years, I have cataloged a list of annoying meeting behaviors or just “AMBs” for short. None of these by themselves are that bothersome. But when you combine three or four of them in the same meeting, it can test the patience of Job.

I‘ve written this to the person exhibiting the behavior(s). That’s not you, of course. But if you want to listen in, that’s fine. Here’s the list:

Video of All Employee Meeting

Okay, it’s not The Chronicles of Narnia or King Kong. It’s just a video of the All Employee Meeting we held on Friday, November 18. In case you missed it, this is your chance to catch the action.

Please note that this is a behind-the-firewall thing. You will not be able to watch the video unless you are a Thomas Nelson employee with access to our intranet server.

Thanks to Gabe Wicks, who oversaw the video production, and Rick Proctor, who got the video working on our server. I think it’s a pretty good first effort. Please let me know what you think! We will hold the next All Employee Meeting in early February.

Technorati Tags: meetings, employee, video

The Estrogen Zone

My wife, Gail, and I spent the last 24 hours at our Women of Faith offices in Dallas, Texas. Last night we had dinner at Luci Swindoll’s home. Her brother, Chuck, and his wife, Cynthia, joined us for dinner, along with Barry and Sheila Walsh, Marilyn Meberg, and Nicole Johnson, all speakers for Women of Faith. Mary Graham, President of Women of Faith, and her roommate, Ney Bailey, were also present.

We had more fun than adults should be allowed to have without supervision. We discussed the books we were reading or wanting to read, the movies we had just seen or were on our list, and the fun and difficult things that are happening in our families. We laughed until our jaws were sore and celebrated the joy of being alive. It was one of those cherished moments that makes my heart swell with gratitude to God.