Category Archives: ON POINT Communication

One Tiny Word, A Range of Powerful Choices

IF is a tiny word with great communication power…

When IF is used properly to improve communication effectiveness!

But IF is not always the best word to use, however, we use it a lot.

For some people, IF is a sloppy habit like saying “yu know?” or “umm.”

To make your point, IF can be the wrong word to include.

Making your point demands certainty about what your point is. There’s no IFs about that. There may be the positivity of a “when” involved, but there’s no room for IFs. “If we can…” has no power, but “When we can…” is powerful commitment.

And yet, when you use IF with deliberate intent to reveal the choices involved in your point, it is the only word to use.

In 1895, British Nobel-Prize-Winning writer Rudyard Kipling wrote the astonishing and thought-provoking poem, If. There’s no better example of how powerful IF can be in the right context WHEN you think…

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men [sic] doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

(Visionary Readability: The Google-AI response to this poem is “The text contains 3 instances where 3 or more consecutive sentences start with the same word [If}. Try to mix things up!”)

Here’s an example of how to fit thoughts from long ago, like the poem If, into today’s first-time-in-history, high-pressure goings-on to make your point:

“IF” Buyers Can Keep Their Heads…

Align: Add Value By Raising Your Standards

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Add genuine professional value to your services and products by raising your standards—your measure of quality and excellence—to align with and exceed those of prospects, clients, and competitors.

When the goal is to add value for prospects or clients, too often the communication go-tos are digital marketing and hyped-up technology.

If flash and hype are what your clients value, what solves their problems, and what they’ll spend more on, go for it.

Most prospects and clients want to see themselves in your services and products. That’s how they perceive value.

Pay attention to how target prospects and clients express their beliefs on quality and professionalism.

Select standards and a work ethic that reflect and exceed target expectations.

A good measure of your success with this? How you behave—your professional standards—when you believe no one is watching or would find out.

Unless your standards are crystal clear to you, how can you meet and exceed them?

It’s not how you feel about your standards. It’s whether they align with and exceed target prospect and client standards and expectations.

How would you characterize the standards of quality and excellence by which you work and live? The standards that define your brand?
Are they average?
Above average?
High?
Exemplary?
Top of the field?

Who set your standards? Did you design them to meet the expectations of your selected target market? Your standards evolve from your upbringing, education, and personal life? Your profession’s Code of Ethics and Standards of Business Practice (however they’re named) are incorporated in your professional or business standards. Your personal standards for working with and for others must be what is most valuable to prospects and clients.

The key issue is who do your levels of quality or excellence revolve around, empathize with, and focus on. You? Your target prospects and clients?

The professional standards you adopt to deliver services, products, and advice should meet and exceed target needs and expectations. Their standards should be reflected in your service and product provision.
Your application of industry standards should be well-above average.
Your personal standards, which evolve over your life, speak to what matters to you. For target prospects and clients to value and respect you—and you them—their standards must align with yours, and vice versa.

You can tell people your standards are high, but do your actions consistently prove this? However you label your standards, it’s the quality category targets place your standards in that matters. Do you know when prospects and clients feel your standards and, therefore, your brand need improvement?

Ask most professionals and business owners about their business standards and they’ll tell you their standards are high, very high. I know because I’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of professionals, entrepreneurs, executives, business owners, and advisors. No one identified their standards as less than “high.”
Ask clients with first-hand experience of your products and services what could be improved and they’ll have a lot of suggestions. Clients always insist they’d share these ideas with the professionals if they asked. I’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of your clients and asked them what could be done to improve the services and returns they receive. They have willingly told me about you.

The challenge lies in recognizing exactly how your standards and, therefore, your brand evolves—what you are doing, not doing…. That’s the invisibility of the box. Unless you regularly hire the right professionals to critique all aspects of your business communication, you have decided—consciously or unconsciously—to take on this evaluation yourself. Is that a wise decision?

Which standards of respect for others do you commit to?

Are you receptive and respectful when a prospect or client makes a suggestion to you? Or, do you, consciously or unconsciously, shift to a defensive “don’t tell me how to do my job” stance or persist with an “it’s all about me” attitude?
Many prospects and clients will deliberately test professionals to see how responsive and respectful they are. If they appear cold or patronizing, clients back off and may not bother sharing insight, returning, or referring. Then, both clients and professionals are losers.
Raising your level of excellence is essentially competing with yourself since you know you can always improve. However, if ego gets in the way and you feel you’ve already beaten the competition, complacency may override constructive curiosity and your standards may suffer as well as your clients and business.

A small thing to you, can be a symptom of a below-standard attitude to others. You may be unaware of this, but it is probably evident to prospects, clients, and competitors:

If you don’t listen to a client, why should they listen to you? Even if they stay with you, will they follow your suggestions, give you all their business, or refer you?
If you don’t respect a client’s opinion, why should they respect yours? Clients who don’t believe that their hired professionals also respect them, may not be as open about their concerns, the extent of their needs, and their commitment to you.
If service, advice, and product standards are based on you at your best, what happens when stress, illness, family issues, or time pressures interfere and you are not at your best?
If you are not from the same generation as your target market, ageism or prejudice against or toward age, may be a disrupting factor. The “too young to know” and “too old to know” cross-generation reactions associated with ageism can accentuate differences of opinion and value systems. These reactions may be compounded by cultural differences and language challenges:
- Not listening to an idea may be an ageist brush-off or may be perceived as such even if it is not.
- Offering suggestions may be ageist criticism or may be perceived as such.

Mediocrity creeps in through insecurity, sloppiness, poor time management, bad habits, sensitivity to criticism, inflated ego, stress, weak powers of observation, and in too many other ways.

Without constructive persistence guiding you toward the best path forward, you will always slip back into old habits and follow established ruts or ingrained patterns of behavior. That is, you may slide backwards or go nowhere in spite of good intentions unless you continually and deliberately renew your determination to move forward and raise your standards.

How do I know my standards of quality and excellence are aligned with and exceed those of my chosen target markets?

For more on improving professional value: Disruption: Get Out of Your Own Way!

Hybrid Events: Technology or People?

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Virtual event site from connecteventhub.com

ILEA rooftop event hub allowed breakouts and main event with flair

Hybrid Events: The latest hot trend, but is it worth following?

Hybrid events which are part live event and part virtual or digital are a sign of pandemic times. Can’t let Covid-19 get in the way of progress after all,

Since live events can quickly turn into super-spreaders—even if they are allowed—virtual or digital meetings make sense, but can be a let down. Are hybrid events the solution? Just because we can, should we?

Trends involve many others doing the same thing, which proves to many that following trends is safe and profitable. Does that mean you’re smart to jump on the Hybrid Event trend for your next special meeting?

Before you dive in, or hire an Event Professional to dive in for you, think.

Ask two key What’s Your Point strategic questions before you jump online to search anything:

Question #1: What’s my point in hosting an event? That is, when this is a roaring success, what will have been accomplished, communicated, and proven? What is there to gain? What is there to lose?
Question #2: Who’s my WHO for this event? Your pre-Covid WHO may have changed dramatically under pandemic pressures. Is it time to redefine your preferred or target client—your WHO—by re-identifying your target market as it exists now, not as it existed pre-pandemic? Or should you target a different ideal client?
Timing is everything these days. What will your WHO want or need by the time you expect their buy-in for your event?

Is technology or people the focus of your event?

“Hybrid is a misnomer,” said Boston-based Kevin White, CSEP and Chief Strategist at XPL, an award-winning experiential design agency, during his keynote at a recent virtual meeting of the Toronto Chapter of the International Live Events Association (ILEA). This digital meeting welcomed participation of Chapter members from across the country in a virtual rooftop garden generated by sponsor Connect Event Hub.

White stressed that doing a virtual event and at the same time doing a live event is not a hybrid event as many label such happenings. This is a multichannel event since there are two channels involved: live and digital.

Participants attending either of the two channels will each have a different experience and want different things. If the event is not a hybrid event, can participants have a hybrid experience since the client experience is top of mind in savvy businesses?

“We’ll see true hybrid where the individual experience is a blend of virtual and live,” said White.

His suggestion now? “Use virtual so you can do that safely, if you do not want to have to cancel. If a live version would collapse at any moment, what’s the point of doing it? This is a risk-taking decision. If the next 8 weeks go smoothly, we may be in a good spot in June of 2021. We may be OK. So do a single channel of virtual and do not think about live. The future is not hybrid.”

White emphasized that digital audiences need as much engagement as live-event audiences to entice them to attend the initial virtual live event. Live and in-person has the draw of urgency and immediacy. What is important enough at your digital event to entice attendance when organizers desire it? The worse incentive to attend a virtual live event is offering a view-anytime replay. Everyone loves replays, but who actually views them?

Event professionals are, by definition, ready for anything. That’s the nature of their fast-paced, change-a-minute business world, so the pandemic has them digging deeper into the creative, but not sacrificing safety to do so.

White stressed the importance of building pandemic safety from the start, throughout a live event, as people leave, and once they are home since these are all Covid-19 contamination points. Making individuals feel personally involved in their protection by including post-event follow-up identifies the professional-events skills involved.

Considering your next event? What’s Your Point?

Often when business owners hire professionals in any field, these would-be clients end up telling the professionals how to do their jobs. The pandemic continues to keep the world off balance, so that professional expertise and experience is essential to achieve results in spite of continually shifting norms. Is it time to stop telling and time to ask professionals for their assessment of what you need to achieve your definition of success?
Technology can distract you from the people you wish to serve. Events are made exciting by technology, but it’s the excitement of attendees that really matters. Event professionals will dazzle you with their problem-solving expertise and their creative-communication powers if you listen instead of telling them “we must have hybrid because everyone’s doing it.”
Read on…Uncertainty Is Certain AND Manageable

ULI: Thinking Outside The Box

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Communication begins in the brain before words come out of your mouth or your fingers slide or tap keys, so the box* you think in is the box in which you communicate.

[Excerpts from Chapter 4: What’s Your Point? Cut The Crap, Hit The Mark & Stick! (2021)]

[4.2] “The Box” In Context

The box represents the mental totality—good, bad, and indifferent—of your life and work plus the diverse conscious and unconscious influences involved.

The goal is not to dismantle or eliminate the box. The aim is to increase awareness of how the box of past experience influences communication—reactions, creativity, intuition…and thinking—before you act. This advance analysis allows you to exploit in-the-box experience or move beyond it, at will, when communicating with those who matter to you, online and off.

As you improve awareness of the impact the box has on what you do, what you don’t do, and who you are, you’ll transform, what can be a mental anchor holding you back, into a practical, creative resource for innovation.

[4.3] Think Outside “The Box”

Has someone told you to think outside the box?

Or, is this what you tell others to do? Or, attempt to do yourself?

In these situations, do you really understand what this instruction involves?

For some, this phrase is a cliché. For others, it has value as a trigger for practical and creative training exercises or business development practices. In most cases, the phrase is not completely understood, so often its value is not fully realized.

Think outside the box is a catchphrase referring to the ability to consciously and deliberately discard preconceptions and approach a problem from a fresh or new point of view.

Whether this “think differently” phrase says it for you or not, it does describe an important aspect of effective Forward Thinking: the mental leap or exploring possibilities and impossibilities outside the box—beyond past experience, stereotypes, bias, prejudice, values, standards, and the norm.

The first—and often-overlooked—step in thinking outside the box is to “see the box.”

This involves identifying key limiting beliefs, mental barriers, emotional triggers, professional standards, and repeating patterns that define your box of past experience in each specific context.

“Outside” EXAMPLE:

Seeing The Box with the Urban Land Institute (ULI)

Since land is under every aspect of our lives and life on the planet, real estate and land use relate to everyone and every business in one way or another. That commonality makes real estate and land use prime areas for examples of the power of the box and the effort required to think outside the box of past experience.

During the two-day ULI 2021 Housing Opportunities Conference, cross-disciplinary real estate and land use experts compared notes on where each of their sectors stood and what might be next. One moderator stated: “What do we do now? We know that development has been the cause and result of segregation and discrimination.

Among the list of out-of-the box issues addressed, here are two “boxes” for developers, investors, and buyers to “see”…

ULI Q: 1. How can the impact of redlining and disinvestment be reversed?

“Redlining was how structural racism and inequality were designed into cities [initially in 239 metropolitan areas across the US]. It has never been undone.”

Kendyl Larson, Director of Research and Planning for the Polk County Housing Trust Fund stressed that “Iowa has a deep history rooted in inequality and exclusion, but the community has no idea how we got to this place.”

“Seeing the box” involves education—in the school system, through media, across the community, self-enlightenment, and in conversation. Terminology must be examined and some discarded. This enlightenment is essential to identifying the box represented by systemic racism and created through entrenched redlining and other policies.

Eyeopening 5-part Video “Redlining in Des Moines” shares startling revelations from Part 1: What is redlining? to Part 5: Where do we go from here? A film that may change the way you look at your real estate and communities.
NYC-based social-impact firm designing the WE “facilitates collaborative processes to redefine how big picture systemic challenges are approached, identify opportunities for action, and co-design more holistic and resilient strategies centered on positive transformation.” dtWE has 18 community projects on the go including Des Moines.

“I personally learned the amount of emotional labor it requires as a person of color to really go through this repetition consistently with local government. We have been saying the same thing for many years…just help out. Try to have a different space for conversations,“ explained Florida-based Sasha Forbes, Director of Community Collaboration and Policy in the Healthy People and Thriving Communities (HPTC) program and the Policy Lead in the Strong Prosperous and Resilient Communities (SPARCC) initiative. Forbes works with community partners to accelerate community-led development that centers racial equity, builds a culture of health, and prepares for a changing climate with a focus on affordable housing, parks and open space, a restorative economy, and transit.

ULI: 2. How do developers make the numbers work for sustainability?

Leading developers shared “their experiences setting project-performance goals and then putting the financing together in a rapidly evolving context.” Despite increasing demand for green, healthy, and resilient communities, green building can challenge development bottom lines that determine whether a project will go ahead or not.

Financial feasibility and funding requirements for sustainable building are influenced by investors with a determination to seek out green projects to please themselves and their stakeholders. Similar motives drive many buyers intent on sustainable projects for two reasons:

1. Green buyers want to invest in real estate that matches their socially-responsible ideals and
2. They want to gain personally from energy efficiency and other benefits associated with sustainable builds in projects ranging from affordable to luxury housing.

To further explore thinking outside the box to achieve sustainable development consider the following three sustainable developers:

Redgate, a strategic real estate advisory and investment firm, builds in Boston’s outer urban areas near transit and favored locations for Boston commuters. Vice-President Elizabeth Bello explained how flood-control and energy efficiency measures are integral to feasibility and affordability for Redgate, investors, and residents alike.
Florida-based ZOM Living is attracted to projects with “a story” said Vice-President Kyle Clayton describing their green luxury rental developments which may involve archeological elements, preserving mangroves, or saving century-old palm trees. Florida’s strict energy code and investors attracted to sustainability drive their company push to do as much green building as possible.
California-based nonprofit Community HousingWorks was described by Senior Vice-President of Housing and Real Estate Development, Mary Jane Jagodzinski, as undertaking an impressively wide range of diverse nonprofit projects across the state. Jagodzinski stressed that “modern sustainability” is about “how you put them together appropriate to their climate.” Sustainability themes include Brownfields, community revitalization, and transit-friendly including construction of a bike lane. Drivers include the CHW Mission for family sustainability, the California Tax Credit system, and the aggressive energy and water code.
“Housing should be seen as infrastructure” stated David Dworkin, President and CEO of the National Housing Conference. Yet another example of how to frame housing in fresh context.

Whether you realize it or not, thinking outside the box before addressing limitations imposed by the box seriously challenges success since you are trying to:

Solve a problem when you don’t fully understand the problem
Decide which choice to make when you don’t know all the choices
Achieve goals without knowing exactly what and how to improve.

The Point: “Successfully and consistently thinking outside The Box demands full understanding of challenges and limitations imposed by The Box. Once these limitations and how to think beyond them are clear, switching at will between thinking inside and outside The Box becomes ever-ready innovative expertise.”…

* In “What’s Your Point?,” the box refers to past experience, positive and negative, in the form of conscious and unconscious limitations, repeating patterns, emotional triggers, and mental barriers, including stereotypes, values, beliefs, bias, and prejudice, that influence problem-solving, strategizing, decision-making, innovating, designing, and other communication challenges, and that differ for each individual and group.

More about ULI’s Housing Opportunities Conference: ULI: Ready for Opportunity? posted at my ongoing and syndicated column “Decisions & Communities” that I write for a client
Act Your Way into a New Way of Thinking

Act Your Way into a New Way of Thinking

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Professionals who do not shed out-dated thinking, bias, and flawed decision making can be just as resistant to change as clients and members of the public—and as susceptible to mediocrity.

Good intentions, even solid logic, are often not enough to overcome ingrained or unconscious resistance to change which makes unknowing difficult.

Those who aim to change unproductive habits, like repeating “you know” or procrastinating, can attest to this.

Experience has taught you that trying to not do something is hard, so you’re sure failure is imminent. We get stuck in the past, because we are trying to talk (even when we call it think) our way into a new way of acting while stuck in the same place, real and mental. This inertia occurs in part because all we have to think about is the way things were done.

The reverse works: act your way into a new way of thinking.

Consciously alter behavior to the desired new pattern and the new way of thinking will gradually take hold. Begin by acting the way you want to end up behaving. Start by embracing new habits and your mindset will follow suit.

Pretend to yourself that you can and you will discover you can.

For instance, if you think you are shy about public speaking, and keep saying so to yourself and others, you’ll continue sabotaging yourself and holding back when speaking opportunities arise.

Start by pretending you are not shy.
Begin by never again saying or thinking “I’m shy.” That’s history.
Act as if you are comfortable speaking in public and you will be. Worked for me.
Gradually, take on bigger speaking challenges. You’ll discover you can communicate more effectively than you were telling yourself.
Regularly remind yourself that you are acting yourself into a new way of thinking to steadily move forward. Keep this commitment fresh in your mind.

[Except from What’s Your Point? Chapter 2, section 2.2.1 Defy Mediocrity & Resistance.]

Additional reading:
“What You Don’t Know…”

No one can or does know everything. What has 2020 taught you as a homeowner about what you don’t know?

Defy Mediocrity & Resistance

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How do you defy mediocrity to overcome resistance?

Developing the ability to unknow allows you to freshly apply your expertise in existing or new contexts to overcome resistance in yourself and others.

In times of change, this resourcefulness is the most powerful communication lesson experience teaches us.

Unknowing—that is, consciously letting go of existing patterns and behaviors to embrace change—challenges professionals and their clients. Many find it difficult to alter their immediate reactions. They overlook the need to shed and ignore the benefits of shedding related habits in behavior and decision making.

One key reason is that, although they say their intentions may have changed, context does not.

Merely saying “I’ll try to…” when stuck in the same frame of reference and with the same mind-set, means they are destined to repeat their established behavior.

Predictable or reflex reactions are frequently associated with communication errors. With experience, these often-dated mind-sets can be anticipated and counteracted before miscommunication occurs. That corrective communication process is an essential element of the established and emerging services you are paid to deliver to clients.

What have you learned by observing communication errors made by clients, colleagues, and competitors as they deal with challenges, including flawed decision making? If you do not test errors like these for cause and effect, you can drift into mediocrity.

You’ll miss opportunities to head-off repeat mistakes and misunderstanding, which often materialize as resistance, and chances to save others from the same fate.

The following are three examples of opportunities to expand a client base, increase sustainable revenue, and eliminate miscommunication that are often missed:
1. What convinced you to stop looking for someone else to blame and started you understanding the chain of events and communication flaws that cause undesired outcomes, including resistance to change?
2. Which social-media-related communication problems and solutions do you anticipate will challenge you, your target prospects, and your clients?
3. How do you minimize problems and lower resistance to make your online-delivered solutions, including products, services, and standards, easier for targets to further customize?

Successfully heading off communication mistakes for you and your clients means adapting the way you think and communicate to ensure you are always steps ahead. Instead of reacting to what happens, anticipate prospect and client reactions to minimize miscommunication, misunderstandings, and missed opportunity—all elements of resistance to change.

When this proactive skill is perfected into consciously-ingrained communication ability, opportunity is rarely overlooked or discounted.

© 2021 Copyright PJ Wade The Catalyst “What’s Your Point? Cut The Crap, Hit The Mark & Stick!” All rights reserved.

Decision Barriers to Avoid (+ exercise)

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Are you decisive or do Decision Barriers get in the way?

How aware are you of how you make decisions?

Do you make decisions differently in the midst of a pandemic than you did before Covid 19 descended on the world?

Before the pandemic, did you make decisions differently when they were your decisions about your life than you did when the decisions concerned your clients and their lives or businesses? What has changed now?

Or has the pandemic kept you from much contact with clients and prospects, so you feel out of practice?

What do you want to improve about your decision making now and post covid?

Your normal approach before the pandemic…What did you say to clients and how did you compensate clients when you overlooked key selection factors or, in hindsight, didn’t choose the best approach to problem solving for them? Or did you stay silent and hope clients didn’t notice?

Your approach in the future…how do you intend to react to the issues in the previous question post pandemic?

The following excerpt from “What’s Your Point?” (to be published in 2021) Chapter 6 “What is Communication?” is an opportunity to take a close look at your decision making process.

Exercise: Action NOW Me — Anticipate Decision Barriers

Answer the following questions quickly and in writing (to engage your brain full on) for the most useful results.

Am I so focused on helping others make decisions that I forget to question how well I make decisions which affect my income and reputation?
What was behind my hesitation in the last tough decision I made?
Are the hesitation triggers involved in my other past difficult choices listed below?

Don’t be surprised if you can check off more than one barrier to that decision making. Simple decisions aren’t simple, after all.

Hesitation Triggers & Barriers

Procrastination
Lack of commitment to possible outcomes
Ignoring steps in the creative process
Undue pressure and arbitrary deadlines
Out-dated thinking, ingrained habits, and biases
Impatience
Fear, conscious and unconscious
Overconfidence
Personal agenda
Financial pressure
_____________ (What has experience revealed to me?)

If I improve my decision making approach, can I think of three ways that will enable me to help clients with theirs?
List three improvements to my support of client decision-making concerns which will be reflected in my bottom line.
Identify three ways increased decisiveness will help me engage with prospects and clients more effectively.
Select five ideas for marketing, business development, product design, or service delivery that are inspired by Hesitation Triggers & Barriers.

Do you understand that the more conscious you are of your decision-making habits, the easier it is to anticipate barriers and to achieve success for all concerned?

Re-visit this exercise in the future when faced with significant decisions to make. Compare what you did previously or “normally” with how you now anticipate decision barriers.

Additional resource: Here’s an example of how to help clients by showing them how to deal with hesitancy and negative aspects of decisiveness in the context of your work together. This article is written to help real estate buyers and the real estate professionals who serve them address this topic —”Buyers: Hesitant or Decisive?“

PJ “To facilitate decision making, concentrate on shifting or transforming uninformed thinking into a constructive mindset. With the assistance of your professional expertise, guide prospects and clients so they pivot to an informed point of view.”

Uncertainty Is Certain AND Manageable

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Suddenly uncertainty descended on us.

Across the globe, individuals from all backgrounds and cultures watched their world and way of life—and possibly their desired future—crumble under the threat of COVID-19 virus.

During the short time the 2020 Pandemic has been with us, we watched in shock as most, if not all, of the certainty of our lives was dismantled or vanished in our efforts to halt the viral force over which we have little control. Jobs lost, education curtailed, businesses trashed, professionals shut down, dreams dashed, hard-won triumphs negated, lives lost….

The war against the invisible virus redefined almost every aspect of society, the economy, and our lives in a few weeks. This reset continues.

The “new normal”—if there even was a “normal” in the first place—is living with uncertainty on a scale never considered possible nor experienced by many people—except perhaps those who’ve lived through a war or an invasion.

Your clients are dealing with all of this uncertainty, plus the loss of your supportive business offerings and possibly your presence. Compounded by their own personal losses and re-directions, this is suddenly overwhelming on almost every level from emotional to financial, from medical to social. Add to all this, the threat of illness, death, or carrying the virus to contaminate others. That’s an exhausting load of negative or destructive uncertainty.

How can you help prospects and clients manage this level of unexpected destructive uncertainty?

Obviously, any relevant constructive solutions you can contribute, depending on your field of expertise and type of products and services, will be valuable and valued.

Uncertainty in itself is not evil. Nor is this hovering unknown an “it” but rather a “them.”

Uncertainty can be either negative or positive and anything in between:

1. In uncertainty’s most negative extreme, uncertainty can be a powerful undermining force or destructive uncertainty, as described above.

2. In the most positive state, uncertainty is constructive uncertainty and can be a terrific motivator and driving inspiration:

Anticipation associated with uncertainty believed to be good, great, or magnificent, is a thrill and an energizer. For instance, looking forward to a special celebration or an amazing opportunity.
Anticipation of completion of a hard-won goal, like earning a university degree or successfully launching a start-up, is linked to the exhilaration of the compellingly-unknown and positively-imagined future ahead. That is, the future may hold graduation followed by a great career or ramped-up business growth and acclaim.
Anticipation associated with the exhilarating uncertainty of each individual’s path from childhood to adulthood—growing up—is the joie de vive, the thrill of living.
Anticipation of a better way, a better life, a better outcome…is at the heart of optimism, enthusiasm, and hope.

Before the virus, the future that lay ahead full of positive contemplation, dreams, and hopes. Now??

Uncertainty, where we fear the outcome, is hard to live with. Consciously, accurately, and constructively redefining destructive uncertainty to reveal related and less-stressful constructive uncertainty opens thinking to neutral or positive alternative outcomes.

Use your professional communication skills and expertise to assist prospects and clients. Help them adopt new perspectives and take constructive action, even if that action is as simple as staying separated during the Pandemic.

As a professional, how do you make your constructive point to clients coping with uncertainty?

Hollow “it’ll turn out alright” statements, groundless optimism, platitudes, aspirations, and parroted phrases may sound good to you, but without practical substance you lose credibility quickly and may be annoying. This saccharin, patronizing “just think positive” approach is like a mental sugar high which may be followed by a mental crash that could intensify desperation.

Dig into your professional expertise and, armed with facts, share the range of opportunity and possibilities visible to you and relevant to clients as their future relates to your offerings, experience, and analysis.

Five Starting Points for the Transformation to Constructive Uncertainty

1. Call on proven, effective communication tools—yours, newly-acquired skills, hired expertise—to provide personalized, clear explanations to consistently make your point with clients.
For instance, using a relevant metaphor that clients can easily relate to, can put the uncertainty in perspective. Make clear how the uncertainty can or will be reduced to enable them to begin to see the choices they have. These can be built on by increasing clients’ awareness of the actual issues at hand. For instance, you are not a powerless leaf blowing in the wind without control or intention. You are a rational, decisive person who can make choices about how to react, what you’ll fight for, and what you let go of as merely a distraction. Hope will grow out of despair if you open your mind to possibilities. That describes your clients, too.

2. Everybody seems touched by the Pandemic, but learn exactly what each of your clients really fear.
Unidentified, unspecified fear is overwhelming. What exactly is each individual afraid of? A common fear like the virus, will materialize very differently for each individual. Fear of which process, outcome, or consequences keeps them awake at night, intrudes on decision making, or paralyzes them with worry? Waiting to see whether the fear of infection or death becomes reality can be torture for non-medical clients. Your expertise may not cover any of those issues, but you know how to locate credible individuals who can raise awareness and reduce unfounded fear. After respectfully listening to clients explain what fears they have, decide what you can do to increase awareness and choice or arrange for another professional to do so. Online communication makes this easier than ever before.

3. Help clients clarify exactly what they might lose.
This may also involve other professionals whose expertise covers important issues raised by clients, but which are outside your expertise. Your experience may involve problem solving to arrive at financial solutions to minimize loss and stress. Or you may help alleviate the distraction of holding on to negative experiences and repeatedly dredging up emotional pain instead of letting go and moving on. Stick to what you know and find the best qualified people to explain other issues. Use humor with caution.

4. Normal was always the wrong word.
In the midst of the Pandemic, people often say, ” I want things to return to normal.” The illusion that normal is best for everybody persists. What others label as normal represents their standard, not yours, nor necessarily the best for anybody. Normal has often been based in the past, driven by bias, grounded in opinion, laden with agendas, or merely a gross generalization with little real value, however:

Liberation from “normal” leaves us all free to find a new purpose, standard, perspective, belief…whatever your target clients prefer to ground their lives or businesses on.
Instead of feeling society must dictate to you what’s right to do or not do, we may be free to set aside standards like “normal” and decide for ourselves what we want to do and why.
Our very diverse, multigeneration populations may finally shake off dated, even old-fashioned, limitations placed on many aspects of life, many of them carry-overs from the 19th- and 20th centuries.

5. There’s no going back, just forward! Onward & Upward are the directions that really matter!
Across the globe, we share societal and economic despair at what is lost and disrupted, but the intensity and critical details vary with individuals and families and their context. If the virus has changed or even destroyed most or all that mattered to you or that you worked for, what’s next? Your choice.
The virus cracked open our “normal” global society. What is it opening up for you?

Have you taken the time away from Netflix to think, genuinely think, about what aspects of your life you really miss and which you’re enjoying a break from?
What work were you doing because you made a commitment or had not taken the time to see what else was out there? What were you doing for the money and little else?

We are all certain “the impossible” has happened whether individuals point to the Pandemic, the global shutdown, or both. What wonderful outcome did you considered impossible in your life or your future before the virus? And in your new future…?

“Perhaps you could now move to make that impossibility happen? For instance, we’ve been slow to genuinely adopt the credibility of working outside a traditional office setting. Too many—even those who “talk tech”—seem to ignore this practical application for the mind-boggling array of collaborative and other remote-access technology. After the Pandemic fades, there may be no going back to the cubical.” said PJ Wade, The Catalyst

Additional resources:

1. For more on addressing your empathy for clients’ changing perspectives on their present choices and futures, explore our communication example based on the role of “home.” This type of approach is designed to assist relevant professionals express how they remain valuable to those they served without pitching, selling, or marketing…

“The strategic frontline for the war against the COVID-19 virus is our homes, therefore, we can all make a significant difference in how this war plays out. PJ Wade explains how the service of “STAYING HOME” buys time for the hard-working medical community and protects everybody.”… NOW: BV (Before Virus) & AV (After Virus)

2. For more ideas on the next step forward, visit these posts:

3. To explore on PJ’s work as The Catalyst, visit www.TheCatalyst.com

Innovation: Six KickStarting Points

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**Innovation—which represents an invigorating kickstart—can begin from any one of Six KickStarting Points:**

KickStart #1. Who?

You. Yes, you.

Rely on innovation to come from others and you won’t be receptive when an opportunity appears to you.

Know a lot about a subject or service? Your in-depth understanding may allow you to shift parameters or factors around for a new take on the norm. Go as far as exploring the ridiculous, impossible, or outrageous and the new mix may lead to innovation.
Know little about a topic or trend? Your clean-slate perspective, combined with your professional-grade comprehension of other topics, may reveal “cracks and crevices” where new ideas could take hold and flourish.

If you’ve always been a “just the facts” professional, remember, it’s never too late to innovate.

KickStart #2. Where?

Innovation may come to you from across the country, the other side of the ocean, or over the net, but the seeds of inspiration lie, often overlooked, close at hand:

With your prospects: Their lack of experience with you and your services, leaves them free to have high expectations and to welcome the impossible. Instead of quickly dismissing their ideas or firmly setting them straight on how things have always been done, stop and listen. Consider what they share with you and delve into how to apply their fresh perspectives.
With your clients: Their experience with you and your advice, has them coming back for more, but exactly, “Why?” If they’ll answer that question honestly and candidly, you may discover how and why they see things differently from you. This insight, combined with revelations of what they misunderstand or what they understand better than you do, can feed innovation on many levels from product design and branding to goal achievement—yours and theirs.

KickStart #3. What?

Does innovation need to be disruptive to make an impact? No, nor “brand new” or “unique.” Innovation may be large or small, a “lightning bolt” or a tweak, dead-on invention or fruitful mistake. When innovation is effective, it starts a chain reaction or avalanche of ideas, new behaviors, reactions…that trigger new products, expand markets, grow ventures, and expedite goal achievement.

KickStart #4. When?

Always. Stay curious and alert wherever you are and whatever’s going on. Ideas will come to you and further thought will build them into practical innovation.

When are you at your most creative and curious? What environments get your creative “juices” flowing? Conferences or symposiums where there’s deliberate mixing of old ideas and fresh new ones? Or is your spirit awakened by experiences widely different from work—travel, sports, museums, music….
Don’t just follow old patterns like restricting the search for new ideas to the start of the new year or September’s carry-over fresh start from back-to-school days. Incorporate the search for innovation opportunities into every month, week, and day until it’s your signature habit to continually explore possibilities. Innovation’s the one thing you must make time for to grow your business, earn credibility, deserve trust, and stay ahead of competition.

KickStart #5. Why?

One of the most effective creative approaches for searching out innovation is the one I call “WHY 5.” Ask “Why?” five times and answer thoroughly each time.

Ask “Why?” and thoughtfully answer this question.
Then ask, “Why?” regarding this first answer.
Take that thoughtful response and ask “Why?” about that answer. By the third response to your “Why?” questions, you’re beginning to dig down and reveal how much surrounding this element of service delivery or another aspect of your business is habit, mediocrity, or “we’ve always done it that way” inertia.
Ask “Why?” again and you may find yourself in unexplored territory.
By the last “Why?” evaluation of your fifth answer, new ideas abound.

If you don’t get this KickStart reaction, you’re not genuinely digging deep to answer each “why.” There’s no benefit without this work.

KickStart #6. How?

How will all this apply to you? What is unique about the context of your work and that of your target clients? The Five Innovation Realities shared in my article, “Ready for Essential Innovation?” will help you evaluate context, meet challenges ahead, and achieve your goals. Discover how in perspectives on innovation common to sales professionals—in this example, real estate and financial professionals—which have implications for all professional communicators or wannabes.

For more on another step forward, check out these posts:

5 Foresight Strategies for Avoiding Hindsight Remorse
4 Signs of Invisible Procrastination
An example of opportunities for innovation: Coaching in the context of the financial and real estate industries. What can hold you back? Are you prepared for coaching success?

For more on PJ’s work as The Catalyst, visit www.TheCatalyst.com

Disruption: Get Out of Your Own Way!

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Disruption is out in the open.

No longer a shock or surprise, disruption is sought-after, copied, and cultivated.

Huge financial returns, wide-grasp power, and lucrative celebrity are key attractive outcomes that make disruption the hot leading edge of business. Since the value of disruption has been proven over and over again, it’s no longer a question of “if” but a clear vision of “when” that has the full attention of forward-thinking leaders.

At the same time, disrupted businesses face an end to their hard-won market share, financial gain, future profit, and perhaps the entire organization.

You know it’s coming whether you admit it or not. How are you preparing to get out of your own way, so you come out of industry or profession disruption and stay way out in front?

⇒ What have you discovered about your vulnerability to disruption?

Understanding the ways in which your industry or profession could be disrupted is vital for ventures from start-ups and wanna-be market invaders to those intent protecting their first-in or long-established market lead, or just holding on until owner retirement.
Where are your vulnerable points?
Disruption can truncate or terminate careers, personal holdings, overall worth, and companies. Disruption anticipation must be required analysis for business owners, partners, professionals, and stakeholders on all levels.
What could disruption cost you and your business?
When you see your principal role as maintaining status quo, you may be playing into the hands of disruptors. To fight off change, are you allocating funds and resources into areas which may weaken your market position or are you increasing vulnerability by leveraging assets?
How can you realize the value built into your business when disruption looms?

>⇒ Example: Identify Disruption Potential

In the webcast “Technology in Homebuilding,” Hanley Wood & Meyers Research CEO, Jeff Meyers shared observations on the potential for disruption in the US homebuilding industry.

Listening to Meyers’ perspective on home building, I was struck by similarities with my observations of other industries and professions. How do the following key points apply to your world?

Home building and construction remain long on tradition and short on digital transformation, making these real estate sectors vulnerable to disruption:

♦ Vulnerability #1. The intention to disrupt is not proclaimed on social media, it just happens.

Anticipation is key.
Disruptors have already moved into real estate: from office disruptor WeWork and hotel/apartment disruptor Airbnb to mega-disruptor Amazon’s attack on retail and other sectors. Meyers related an example of how the disrupted may be the last to know. Greystar, a global leader in rental housing, was seemingly unaware of disruption by Airbnb until that company offered to partner with Greystar by explaining “we have over 5000 of your units in our system.”
What “back door” have you left wide open in your organization or client relationships?

♦ Vulnerability #2. Disruption of an industry requires “deep pockets” for experimentation and exploration to establish the most practical, lucrative disruptive pathway.

The attraction of historically solid returns is a key vulnerability.
Major disruptors like Amazon and Google have billions to experiment with in the home building and construction industries. By example, Meyers mentioned Amazon-backed Plant Prefab as a stepping stone which may lead the way to sustainable modular-prefab projects that challenge traditional development. This practical wedge into home building may be one way in, but there are many potential entry points.
What could “deep pockets” accomplish that you have not?

♦ Vulnerability #3. Combined digital advances and trend-setting technology can transform practices and systems.

Social-media- and technology-driven shifts in consumer behavior and expectations can leave first-in and leading companies far behind.
Disruption takes many forms, but technology enables increased speed and efficiency to open major avenues for change: faster production, faster delivery, faster customization, faster research and development…. Advances in the speed of construction through steel-framing companies like Prescient cut costs, improve affordability, and heighten investment returns, said Meyers.
What changes to “the way it’s always been done” would keep you out in front with your target markets?

Meyers explained his intent in talking disruption was to rally home builders to adopt digital transformation of their sales and marketing processes and particularly their buyer experience.

⇒ Clients and customers can become catalysts for disruption.
Read PJ Wade’s from-the-inside-out examination of how communication and the lack of it may reveal the potential for disruption to home buyers before home builders see the future: Home Builders: Do They “Get” Buyers? on PJ’s Decisions & Communities blog.

⇒ What are your weak spots, exposed flanks, or out-dated hack points?

Believing you’re invincible is one way to get through tough or uncertain times, but it may not be the practical or powerful strategy that current times demand.

Every single aspect of your business and career can not be equally strong and resilient. One weak spot or two or more combined flaws may exist and be underestimated as disruption points.

⇒ Do you understand where your greatest vulnerability lies?

How are you and status quo getting out of the way? How will you react constructively to disruption before it’s too late?

Keep your opinions to yourself. Listen more than you talk. You want to learn what you don’t understand about technology and how it is changing people’s lives and the way we do almost everything. Listen to academics, professionals, and experts, who have knowledge and inspiring experience to share.
Stop thinking you have time. You’re too late for this to be easy, but not too late to be successful. Technology is snowballing through industry after industry. Nothing is going back to the way it was. Even when online changes do not prove fruitful, there’s no going back. They’ll just be replaced with new online and digital solutions. One significant change is how many are turning to their target prospects, customers, and clients and to their data for ideas on how to make the transformation make sense and make money.
Digital transformation is no longer a choice, it’s a necessity. What you don’t know or understand, many competitors and disruptors do. Concentrate on building your expertise in identifying exceptional experts and hiring them for the good of your company and clients. This is not about what you can do, but what you can put in place. Then, move out of the way of those you hired because they know more than you do.
Stop expecting accolades and pats on the back. Concentrate on earning trust by being the one who really knows how to lead by stepping aside and letting the experts you hand-picked self-lead. Retain leadership status by creating a powerfully-cohesive, forward-knowing team and organization and getting out of your own way to take your venture forward.