"Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem." Woody Allen

"Passion is born deaf and dumb." Honore de Balzac

"You are a victim of the rules you live by." Jenny Holzer

Today's image: Clothes Pins by thenewclotheshorse. Great shot. Thanks for sharing.

Minding the Gap

Improving performance
The three questions
The five action steps

To achieve your objective, to reach or exceed your goal you'll need to become obsessed with the gap. The gap is that territory between where you are now and where the goal resides. In my experience, leaders that focus only on the objective, singularly on the goal, are the ones who are most likely to fail in reaching their goal.

The three questions

On a daily basis leadership must ask three questions...

1. What is happening?
2. What is not happening?
3. What can I do to influence the action?

The five action steps

On a daily basis leadership needs to ensure decisive action is taken...

1. Measure. Observation is certainly very important. Being aware of what is happening and what is not happening is critical. Reducing these observations to measures, to data, is key. Establish a scorecard or a dashboard and track metrics. Data is everywhere - capture, organize and share it. Remember Drucker ..."Information is data endowed with relevance and purpose." What are the numbers?

2. Study. Once leadership has metrics at hand attention should be focused on doing the homework. The process of reflection leads to analysis and helps one to develop a cold unvarnished interpretation of process and events. This step requires thinking out loud, encouraging dissent and open, intellectually honest debate. THINK. RETHINK. What does your "gut" tell you? What do the numbers mean?

3. Decide. Set standards of performance. Begin reading "through" the numbers, get a feeling for what's working and why. Make informed, considered, carefully measured decisions. Create a daily action plan. What are the numbers suggesting we do next?

4. Act. Put things into motion. Make something happen. Leadership must instill a bias for action. Remain flexible, keeping the team focused on the finer points of execution. All the rules and discipline of great performance art are in play. Celebrate success no matter how small. Catch people doing something right. Are we executing on plan? What numbers are our actions producing?

5. Learn. Leadership must lead learning. Leaders are responsible for developing a deep understanding of what's driving their business (and what's not). The great leaders know their numbers cold. The temptation is to be seduced into putting the numbers aside, which leads to confusing activity with progress. This is where metrics play a vital role. The scorecards or dashboards, the numbers, work to keep the team honest. Discover what activities are working (i.e., producing effective results, the best numbers) and which are not. Experiment and learn to fail faster. Keep the words of the great Sir Ken Robinson in mind "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original." Score and evaluate all activity. Step up, fine tune, productive practices and abandon practices that fail to meet established (and dynamic) standards of return. What are we learning? What have we learned? What do we need to learn? What needs to be done? This is the essential step where game-changing innovation is fostered.

"If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten."

One of the biggest challenges of leadership is nurturing the important process of unlearning. It is the responsibility of leadership to produce results and this requires the constant questioning and testing of all conventional wisdom. One must not simply accept industry dogma as is but dare to break free from accepted practices. This is the price to be paid in any quest for true greatness.

It's all about daily discovery within the context of workflow. It's not a matter of getting better but rather an exercise in changing up activity, and getting dramatically different. To reach or exceed your goals and objectives you and your team will first have to get serious about doing your homework, concentrating on all the factors at play around and near a constantly moving target. To succeed consistently you'll need to learn to think like a merchant which means you'll have to focus on today's receipts, weekly and monthly tracking is too late to matter in today's changing world. To win dedicate yourself to becoming a master in the game that is minding the gap.

(FD: Today's post was inspired from materials developed for one of our popular 2008 workshops "Leading the successful station brand: Lessons learned from America's best local retailers." As many of you are aware we also happen to be merchants, accordingly, we closely follow and study retail. Our retail operation serves as a real-time working lab. One of our favorite questions to ask those who propose to teach others how to sell retailers - or charge for insights into how the business of retail works today - is "Please, tell us about your retail store?" The answer too often reveals ... 1. No retail ownership experience whatsoever 2. Little or no actual retail management experience. 3. Little or no recent experience advising retailers. Buyer beware.)

P.S. If you have not done so already, please do not forget, today is the day to pay Sam. He's expecting it.

"Wit and fine writing doth not consist so much in advancing things that are new, as in giving things that are known an agreeable turn." Alexander Pope

"If you do not want to conquer the world anew every single day, you will lose more of it day by day." Christian Morgenstern

"The second step in the right direction is the most difficult."Theo Mestrum

Today's image: you can play with it... by Pensiero. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Closed circuit to CEOs: One of the next superstars, a person you need to hire to help save your company, is now unemployed (still looking), crowding fifty and probably female. You'll find irrefutable proof of this bold assertion via a YouTube video available using this link. Thank me later.

P.S. The next time you are told "there's no one out there" - your response should be "I just don't believe that's true."

Bonus tip: Take "there's no one out there" for what it is - an excuse. As a practical matter, this line serves as a wake-up call, a critical early warning sign that important, serious work is not getting proper attention.

You did watch the video, right? Trust me, it's an inspiration. Please, do watch it by clicking here.

Larry Bentson

N. L. Bentson started his storied career on the radio as a child actor. He was a bigger-than-life original, a gifted visionary, a true legend in the American media and communications industries. Larry pioneered FM radio, television, cable tv and mobile telephony.

A brilliant business leader, Larry was also a philanthropist.

He cared deeply about issues that mattered, his involvement in a project always ensured a positive and lasting difference was inevitable. Larry concerned himself with a great many charitable efforts including those focused on improving the lives of children, especially the quality of their health and education.

Larry was always preoccupied with the possible, the what if, the why not. His thoughts were often on the horizon, one he knew certain to be filled with unlimited promise and incredible opportunity. As of this year, there are 250 Bentson Scholars. Those college students and their graduated fellows are part of one of Larry's many dreams come true - the largest private scholarship program in America.

This great gentleman was my dear friend and mentor. He passed away last night. Larry Bentson, sui generis. Godspeed.

Related: Midcontinent Communications release, here.

"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." Henry Ford

"The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators." Edward Gibbon

"If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then nine times out of ten it will." Paul Harvey

Today's image: blue or red?? by bratan. Great shot. Thanks for sharing.

Six lessons from Paul Harvey

Many fine pieces have been written in appreciation of the great Paul Harvey. Bob Greene has created an exceptional one (via CNN). Greene said Harvey was "...the ultimate singer-songwriter. He wrote the lyrics. And then he went onto his stage and performed them." Harvey, as noted by Greene and others, was a craftsman. The Okie that invented an American radio empire from scratch, Harvey was the accomplished one of a kind performer who headlined a show of national importance. He worked six days a week on that show and he enjoyed an amazing run of more than 57 years. At the final curtain the Harvey shows were carried on 1,200 stations and 400 Armed Forces Network affiliates.

We can all learn something from Paul Harvey. Allow me to suggest six lessons.

1. Timing counts. Harvey launched his network radio show in 1951 long after the stars had left the building. TV was the hot property at the time and few saw any future whatsoever in radio, after all, it had been officially pronounced dead. Harvey made a bold contrarion wager at exactly the right time. He recognized adversity as being pregnant with opportunity.

2. Original concepts create contrast. Paul Harvey News and Comment was not a better version of the quarter-hour news program, it was a fresh, different approach, a reinvention. Harvey was the showman who kept the flame of appointment listening relevant and rewarding. He endeared himself to the point of being a part of daily life; Paul Harvey was a habit. Harvey's metier was capturing the attention and the imagination of millions. His became the most popular, the most successful, quarter-hour program in radio history. Moreover, it remains the last of that once prevalent configuration.

3. Judgment matters; effective storytelling starts with the right story. Harvey had an advantage of birth. Strong Midwestern sensibilities and a work ethic nurtured in Tulsa and matured to full measure in Chicago. He had a gift, an ability to recognize and appreciate the right raw materials. As he once told Larry King "I don't think of myself as a profound journalist. I think of myself as a professional parade watcher who can't wait to get out of bed every morning and rush down to the teletypes and pan for gold."

4. Great shows start with great writing. Harvey was a wordsmith. Every word counted. He had a deep understanding of writing for the ear. As Greene said "the writing itself was so beautiful -- his respect for words, his understanding of the potency of economy, his instinct for removing the superfluous."

5. Successful performance is an fine art. Harvey didn't simply read his well crafted script, he staged a performance. He was at once a bigger than life character, an authentic personality and the straight talking friend of the family. Mindful that names makes news he was the uncommon evangelist that led a daily celebration noting the achievements of the common folk. He employed the pause to great dramatic effect knowing that silence is powerful punctuation. His kickers were served up with a playful wink. The epilogue brought a smile, a grin or a groan but always created a moment of relief, a welcomed distraction from the press of daily affairs.

6. There's no show without the business. Harvey was an old school pitchman. Being a peddler was an essential part of his act, he knew sales paid the bills. His unabashed enthusiastic embrace of sponsors was unique if not anachronistic. Harvey pitched using an engaging personal approach, a certain polite persuasion, a respectful disarming charm that is perhaps indigenous to Chicago. He took a page from the playbook of another famous Chicago ad man - Leo Burnett. It was Burnett who believed the objective of advertising copy was to discover the "inherent drama" in the product itself and present it believably, like a news story. No one has ever done that better or more effectively on the radio than Paul Harvey.

For those who wish to study the practical application of the vogue - including the popular notions of self as brand or followers as tribes - one need look no further than that amazing American original, Paul Harvey. He wrote the book.

"Many people know how to work hard; many others know how to play well; but the rarest talent in the world is the ability to introduce elements of playfulness into work, and to put some constructive labor into our leisure." Sydney J. Harris

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein

"By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail." Benjamin Franklin

Today's image: Sunset by Fred Winston. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&showPlaylist=true&from=shared" target="_new" title="Future Vision Montage">Video: Future Vision Montage</a>