Students Of Success

Current Situation:

As of this writing, the MCI Board of Governors has given Verizon Communications Inc. one week to sweeten their $7.5 billion offer, otherwise they have no choice but to accept Qwest Communications’ $9.74 billion offer to purchase MCI Inc. If the Board does not receive a counter offer from Verizon Communications by May 3, 2005, then it will recommend its shareholders vote for Qwest’s offer. From all accounts (Noguchi Washington Post, 4/24/2005), Verizon is a stronger and more stable company with $71.3 billion versus $13.8 in 2004 revenue, 210,000 employees versus 42,000. Qwest carries more than $17 billion in debt and it plans to reduce its costs by $15 billion by cutting 15,000 employees after the merger while Verizon plans to cut about 7,000 jobs.

The Problem:

The question is: Can Qwest Communications break all rules of successful mergers and still survive? The driving force behind Qwest’s acquisition is the 60-70 percent of MCI shareholders, which consists of hedge fund investors (a group of super rich investors) with a strong interest in quick return on their investments. Since MCI just came out of bankruptcy, the bank creditors are not going to benefit with Qwest’s plan to cut 17,000 jobs and it is going to be very difficult to keep key employees. When key employees depart for other companies it is highly likely that customer service will suffer leading many of them to change their service providers. It is also feasible that Verizon could use its financial resources to build new networks to attract MCI’s corporate customers located in the Northeast region where it does business.

Déj Vu:

MCI has been here before. The year was 1997 and British Telecom (BT) was ready to acquire MCI for $21 billion. Then BT discovered a discrepancy in MCI’s accounting and reduced its offer to $17 billion. Bernard Ebbers, at the time the Chief Executive of WorldCom stepped in and offered about $31 billion all in stocks. At the time, BT was in the same position that Verizon is currentlyvery stable and debt light. It appears that history is repeating itself. During the late 1990s and early 2000, several dotcom businesses failed because they did not follow proven business models. They thumbed their noses at well-established and functioning business practices.

Merger strategy and post merger integration:

Those contemplating the merger of Qwest and MCI must know something that the experts of mergers and acquisition do not know. Qwest needs MCI to expand its long distance business and to grow. They see a synergy between the two organizations. However, they fail to admit that the major investors are in it for the quick return on their investments. It has been widely reported that 60-80 percent of mergers and acquisitions fail. This is due in part to inattention to post merger integration of two corporate cultures, loss of key employees, and inability to meet customer needs. In addition, by the time the merger is approved by the regulatory bodies, the competition can develop their own strategies to negate any possible impacts of the merger to their business.

The result is the buyer ends up losing. No other organization has been able to survive without adherence to most of the basic principles of organizational change management. Who knows, the leaders of Qwest Communications may have some creative ways to make this corporate marriage work. I wish them all the best. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” George Santayana (1863-1952) Reason in Common Sense.

Dr. Odubiyi is the author of Blueprint for a Crooked Housea book that reflects on the factors that caused the collapse of a $10 billion joint venture between AT&T and British Telecom. He is an associate professor of computer science at Bowie State University in Maryland. He was a Principal AI Researcher and R&D Manager at British Telecom North America/Concert Global Communications (USA).
http://www.blueprintforacrookedhouse.com

“Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams.
Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled
potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in,
but with what is still possible for you to do.”
-Pope John XXIII

One of my newsletter subscribers wrote to share how profoundly she was affected by thinking about three questions I asked in my last article, The Power of Acknowledgement.

Perhaps these questions deserve further reflection:

1. Are you affected by what happens to you?
2. Do you affect what happens to you?
3. Which would you prefer?

In The Art of Possibility, authors Rosamund and Benjamin Zander remind us of our tremendous ability to attract what we want in our lives by being purposeful. In addition to being co-author of this wonderful book, Ben Zander is also the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and a teacher at the New England Conservatory of Music.

After 25 years of teaching, Ben Zander recognized that students would be in such a chronic state of anxiety over the measurement of their performance that they would be reluctant to take risks with their playing. One evening Ben brainstormed with his wife, Roz (she is a therapist), to see if they could think of something that would dispel students’ anticipation of failure. Here’s what they came up with.

Ben had a class of 30 graduate students taking a two-semester exploration into the art of musical performance, including the psychological and emotional factors that can stand in the way of great music-making. He announced at the beginning of the semester that each student in the class would be getting an A for the course. However, they were asked to fulfill one requirement to earn this grade.

Sometime during the next two weeks, each student was asked to write him a letter dated for the following May, which began with the words, “Dear Mr. Zander, I got my A because…”. In the letter they were to tell a detailed story of what would have happened to them by next May that was in line with them receiving an A in his class. In other words, Zander asked the students to place themselves in the future, looking back, and to report on all the insights they acquired and milestones they attained during the school year, as if those accomplishments were already in the past. He asked them to write about the person they would have become by next May.

You’ll have to get The Art of Possibility to read some of the amazing letters Ben Zander received from his students.

Zander tells us that “the A is an invention that creates possibility for both mentor and student, manager and employee, or for any human interaction. The practice of giving an A allows the teacher to line up with her students in their efforts to produce the outcome, rather than lining up with the standards against these students. In the first instance, the instructor and the student, or the manager and the employee, become a team for accomplishing the extraordinary; in the second, the disparity in power between them can become a distraction and an inhibitor, drawing energy away from productivity and development.”

Doing Things the “Right” Way

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way,
the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Those in charge often fall into the trap of identifying their own agendas and standards, along with a message that “my way is the only right way.” Virtually everybody wakes up in the morning with an unseen assumption that life is about the struggle to survive and get ahead in a world of limited resources. This limited view squelches innovation and creativity, and it also trains people to focus on what they need to do to please their superiors by doing things the “right” way — whether that way works for them or not.

As a youth I had planned on a performance career as a coloratura/lyric soprano, so I was thrilled when I was offered admission to Eastman School of Music — a very competitive and top-rated music conservatory in New York. I vividly recall one of my lowest moments during my freshman year at Eastman…

My roommate was a bassoonist, and we were both giving recitals near the end of our freshman year. She needed a scheduled break in the middle of her recital to rest her embouchure (the formation of the muscles in the mouth and lips, designed to create pressure on the reed), so she asked if I would perform something from my recital on her program. I agreed to do so, thinking it would also be good practice for me as I prepared for my own recital two weeks later.

The week before her recital, my voice teacher noticed a flyer advertising my roommate’s recital program, with my name included on her program. That week when I entered my teacher’s studio for my voice lesson, she pulled out a copy of my roommate’s flyer and informed me that I would not be performing in her recital because I was not ready During the ensuing rage-filled lecture that followed, my teacher instructed me that I was never to perform in public without her permission. After all, her reputation was on the line! She could not believe I had the audacity to consider performing anywhere in public without first getting her permission to do so.

Recalling this most unpleasant outburst from my Prima Donna voice teacher 28 years ago, I have great appreciation for something that Ben Zander said: “It is dangerous to have our musicians so obsessed with competition because they will find it difficult to take the necessary risks with themselves to be great performers. The art of music, since it can only be conveyed through its interpreters, depends on expressive performance for its lifeblood. Yet it is only when we make mistakes in performance that we can really begin to notice what needs attention.” You don’t have to be a musician to appreciate the value of his wisdom.

Zander actively trains his students to celebrate their mistakes by lifting their arms in the air, smiling, and saying, “How fascinating!” As I read the book, I tried to imagine what it would have been like as an 18-year-old performer if I had studied with a teacher like Benjamin Zander.

You may be wondering what happened after my voice teacher ripped me to shreds. At the age of 18, I did not have the backbone to stand up to a person of such famed stature, so I did not perform in my roommate’s recital. Just two weeks later I performed the same piece in my own recital…and my teacher was very pleased with my performance. After completing my freshman year, I transferred to Macalester College in Minnesota, where I got a great liberal arts education and studied with an outstanding and affirming voice teacher for my remaining three years. There I received encouragement and support in an environment where it was safe to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them. Instead of feeling defeated, I flourished.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who founded analytic psychology, sums it up by saying that “Criticism has the power to do good when there is something that must be destroyed, dissolved, or redirected, but it is capable only of harm when there is something to be built.”

Zander suggests that mistakes and negative experiences can become great opportunities for growth. He tells the story about a tenor who came to him after losing his girlfriend. He was in such despair that he could hardly function. Zander was secretly delighted, because he knew that this heartbreak would enable the tenor to more fully express the heart-rendering passion of Schubert’s Die Winterreise (about the loss of a beloved). Zander recalls, “That song had completely eluded him the previous week because up to then, the only object of affection he had ever lost was a pet goldfish.”

In The Art of Possibility, the Zanders share a fundamental practice that is captured in the catch-phrase, “it’s all invented.” It’s all a story you tell — not just some of it, but all of it. And every story you tell is founded on a network of hidden assumptions.

Zander explains, “We do not mean that you can just make anything up and have it magically appear. We mean that you can shift the framework to one whose underlying assumptions allow for the conditions you desire. Let your thoughts and actions spring from the new framework and see what happens.”

Here’s a great example of the power of shifting your framework and assumptions: A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying, “Situation hopeless. No one wears shoes.” The other writes back triumphantly, “Glorious business opportunity. They have no shoes!”

Perhaps you’ve applied limitations that were not given to you, but were assumed. So what happens if you open up the possibility of using the space beyond the dots rather than confining yourself to work within the square formed by the outer dots? If you are still struggling with this, scroll down to the end of this article to see what is possible when you invent a new point of view.

Here are some simple questions the Zanders suggest you ask yourself as you practice “it’s all invented.”

• What assumptions am I making, that I’m not aware I’m making, that gives me what I see?
• What might I now invent, that I haven’t yet invented, that would give me other choices?

Remember the three questions I began this article with?

Are you affected by what happens to you?

Do you affect what happens to you?
Which would you prefer?

Using the “it’s all invented” practice, perhaps you can begin to see how you can profoundly affect what happens to you.

I invite you to take out a piece of stationery and write yourself a letter, dating it for June, 2006. Project yourself into the future as you write a letter about all the insights you will have acquired and the milestones you will have attained during the year, as if your accomplishments for the next twelve months were already in the past.

“In the realm of possibility, we gain our knowledge by invention. Language creates categories of meaning that open up new worlds to explore. The pie is enormous, and if you take a slice, the pie is whole again. ” –Benjamin Zander

What is possible when you invent a new point of view?

“When you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change.”
–Wayne Dyer

Kathy Paauw helps busy executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs de-clutter their schedules, spaces and minds so they can focus on what’s most important. She is an organizing & productivity consultant, certified professional & personal coach, and speaker. Contact Kathy via email: kathy@orgcoach.net or visit her website at http://www.orgcoach.net and learn how you can find anything you file or store in 5 seconds…guaranteed!

Microfiber mopping systems are becoming more widely used in commercial and hospital settings over traditional mopping systems for a variety of economic and safety reasons.

• Microfiber mop heads are extremely absorbent, holding six or seven times its weight in water, which means it can hold enough water to get the job done, yet doesn’t drip like the traditional wet mop. Because the mop head needs less water, floors dry more quickly because they’re merely damp, not visibly wet. Floors cleaned with microfiber mopping systems typically dry in 1/3 the time of traditional mopping systems. This makes for a much safer environment, resulting in fewer slip/fall accidents.
• Instead of continually rinsing and wringing, the soiled microfiber mop heads are replaced with clean pads, which helps to eliminate cross contamination. Then all the dirty pads are washed and readied for re-use. Each mop pad can be washed and re-used hundreds of times. Traditional mop heads cannot hold up to repeated washings and need to be replaced more often.
• Another safety feature of microfiber mopping systems is that they are ergonomically friendly for users. The mop handles are very light-weight, and the mop heads swivel, so there is no need to use awkward movements and postures while mopping. The handles also have adjustable lengths, so each user can adjust the length to match their height.
• Microfiber mopping systems eliminate the need for buckets and wringers, which means there is no need to strain back muscles by lifting heavy mops soaked with water and then pressing down on wringers to get rid of the excess water. Workers also find microfiber mopping systems less tiring because there is no extra lifting, moving, dumping, and rinsing needed as is the case with traditional mopping systems.
• There is also a huge economic savings in chemical usage when making the switch to microfiber mopping systems. There is no need for large amounts of cleaners or disinfectants, which need to be added to the traditional mop bucket filled with water. Although disinfectants and cleaners can be used with microfiber mopping systems, very small amounts are needed.

Here is a simple method that can be used to incorporate a microfiber mopping system to your cleaning program:

1. Place a clean plastic basin on the cleaning cart, and then fill with water at the utility sink in the janitor closet. Add a small amount of cleaning solution to the water if needed.
2. Place a number of microfiber mop pads into the water to soak.
3. When ready to mop, wring out a mop pad, drop it flat on the floor and attach to the mop head (microfiber mop pads and heads use velcro to attach to each other).
4. To change the mop head, simply turn the mop upside down, remove the soiled pad, place it in a bag on the cart, and replace with a fresh pad from the plastic basin.
5. At the end of the shift, the soiled microfiber pads are cleaned and dried for re-use.

If you’re like most small cleaning companies, you’re looking for ways to save money and provide safer working conditions for your workers. Incorporating a microfiber mopping system into your cleaning program will help to save your company money on expensive mop buckets, mops and mop heads. Even better is the fact that you’ll see fewer slip/fall accidents, and fewer lifting and ergonomic injuries to your employees.

Steve Hanson is co-founding member of The Janitorial Store (TM), an online community for owners and managers of cleaning companies who want to build a more profitable and successful cleaning business. Sign up for Trash Talk: Tip of the Week at http://www.TheJanitorialStore.com and receive a Free Gift!