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Collateral Benefit on the “A” Train

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‘You must take the A train,’ is the opening lyric to Billy Strayhorn’s signature Duke Ellington song.

Last night I did just that, enjoying the company of the very wise Peter Firestein.

We were returning from a delightful book party to celebrate the publication of LJ Rittenhouse’s  new book Buffet’s Bites.  I was telling Peter that he really needed to read Chris Brogan, who was the subject of last week’s Trust Quotes interview. (And yes, this is a lot of self-referential links, but it’s all true).

“What’s Brogan’s message in a nutshell?” asked Peter.

I pondered that. “I guess it’s that great marketing and customer relations in the new media age is same as it ever was: the best of it comes from unsolicited testimonials from customers.  And the best way to get that is to focus on the customers and on serving their needs. If you do that, they’ll then market you.”

“And,” I said, warming to the subject, “the paradox is that your own success cannot be a goal—it is a byproduct, a secondary result, an outcome–but not a goal.”

“Sure,” said Peter, “I get it. Like collateral damage—but collateral benefit.”

“Yes!” I said, “Collateral benefit.  It’s what you and I and LJ and (Warren) Buffet believe too. Buffet’s best stock picks are great companies. And great companies are built on relationships—with stockholders, customers, employees. If you serve them, everything works—including your own results. But only as collateral benefit.”

I thought “collateral benefit” was a pretty cool phrase. I still do, hours later. I warned Peter I might blog about it.

So here’s to you, Peter; thanks for the world’s next mega-catch-phrase: collateral benefit.

The rest is up to the rest of you.

The Changing Face of Capitalism: Schizophrenia in the Apple Store

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The other day I was in one of the Apple Stores. The hinge had broken on my MacBook Air, which meant the top of the computer, the screen part, had to be replaced. It was to be done for free, which I love about Apple.

The store was crowded; I asked the young lady salesperson if using my Mac ProCare card would move things along. She looked at my card, told me it was out of date, and offered to go update it.

When she came back, she was apologetic. “The thing is,” she stammered, “I think they’re kind of going to be de-emphasizing the ProCare program.”

“Huh?” I said. “Is it continuing, or not?”

“Well, I think they’re maybe going to be phasing it out,” she squirmed.

“As of when is it phasing out?” I asked, “ and is there a replacement program? I just want to know how to get premium service.”

“Well, I think they’ve already stopped it, really,” she stammered. This was getting nowhere fast.

Fortunately, the store manager came by and took over; he assured me I’d get the repaired computer by day’s end (which I did, by the way).  I asked him, “What’s up with the ProCare program?”

“Oh,” he said, “we’re discontinuing it.”

“Why?”

“Well, it was so popular that everyone was buying it, and then you have a problem with, like, who do you let at the head of the line, and who do you have to say no to, and all that sort of hassle.”

This boggled my mind. “Why not just raise the price?” I asked.

He laughed. “You know, several other people have suggested that too.”

“Well no wonder they have,” I said. “If everybody wants something at one price, raise the price—you make more money, and it very easily sorts out to whom it’s worth more and to whom it isn’t.”

“Yeah, but it’s kind of unfair that way too, you know,” he said, in a ‘you clearly don’t get it, do you’ sort of a way. And I left, bemused again at the curious mix of capitalism and west-coast do-goodism that is Apple Computer.

No company is better at in-your-face planned obsolescence than Apple; just trying getting a replacement battery for an iPod. No company is better at aggressive pricing; and how many mature companies can claim a stock price growth of ten fold in five years?

All this, in spite of echoes of PC (not the computer) instincts and shades of tie-dyed Deadhead ethos in the stores. Or, is it because of said instincts and ethos?

Changing Ideologies in Business: From Competitive Capitalism to Collaborative Capitalism

Then again, why should Apple be unique in its schizophrenia about capitalism? Business in general is in the midst of a paradigm shift in business, away from shareholder-centricity toward stakeholder-centricity. An excellent article in the Economist  summarizes this ideological shift, citing several current business thinkers.

Business, I think, is undergoing some serious foment with respect to some very fundamental beliefs. Milton Friedman, Michael Porter, Michael Jensen—these are the thought leaders of the past, championing neo-classical economics, the purification of competition, and the primacy of shareholder wealth respectively.

The new thought leaders remain to be definitively enumerated, but the issues are emerging. They rhyme with collaboration, trust, networking, flat organizations, and Gen Y. To name a few.

Stay tuned, it’s getting interesting. And Steve Jobs may end up, once again, looking pretty prescient.
 

At the Corner of Assertiveness & Cooperation: Collaboration

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© Copyright 2003-2010, Pfaff & Associates. All Rights Reserved.What do we meet at the corner of Assertiveness and Cooperation? The Thomas-Kilmann assessment suggests that it’s Collaboration.

Their assessment,  which is the basis for many others, explores different styles people use when handling conflict. For some of you this work may be familiar, but I only learned of it a few days ago from my sister, a professional mediator. Here is a free version which gives you a quick view of the five areas measured by the Thomas-Kilmann assessment.

It identifies five styles of handling conflict between two people: the Avoider, the Accommodater, the Compromiser, the Competitor and the Collaborator.

These types are arrayed in a graph with Assertiveness (defined as concern for the task, or as "thinks of self") on one axis, and Cooperation (defined as concern for people, or "thinks of others") on the other. In the lowest left hand corner is the Avoider, someone who’d rather not deal with conflict at all, and in the upper right hand corner, the corner where the highest level of Cooperation meets the highest level of Assertiveness, is the Collaborator. (Smack dab in the middle, as you’d expect, is the Compromiser, but we’ll save that for another day.)

What fascinated me about this model is the light it sheds on Collaboration: where its power comes from, and what distinguishes it from Compromise. Certainly, there are situations in which compromise is adequate and even worthwhile. I’d like to go out for dinner, you’d like to stay home. Taken a step further, I’d like not to cook tonight, and you’d like not to get dressed up or spend a lot of money. A compromise on a nearby casual restaurant fits the bill perfectly, and you and I probably don’t need to spend a minute more on a "conflict" like this. But a compromise is always a meeting in the middle, so each gets a little of what they want, and compromise often gets to a gray solution, not really satisfying to anyone but sort of appeasing everyone. In art, it’s mixing a lot of colors to get mud.

Collaboration gets its power because it uses the energy of Assertiveness–ideas and real points of view, championed by people who care–and the energy of Cooperation–a willingness to make things work for all involved. From collaboration comes the best result, the idea or solution which is fashioned from everyone’s input and is better than what any one person could have come up with on her or his own.

And a key point in all of this, a key ingredient in collaboration, is that it starts with conflict, but it doesn’t end there. It takes the energy of the conflict–opposing or differing views, needs and goals–and the attitude of collaboration–the willingness to reach the best solution for all concerned–to get somewhere we’ve never been before, and somewhere we couldn’t go alone.

I’ll close with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A leader isn’t a seeker of consensus, but a molder of consensus."

PS: If you love this kind of self-knowledge quiz, try our Trust Temperament assessment. Far cheaper and more revealing than a therapy session.

Apollo 13: A Love Song to Collaboration

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“Houston, we have a problem.” Famous words uttered by Jim Lovell in the real Apollo 13 mission, and by Tom Hanks as Lovell in the great movie Apollo 13. The mission, we know, was a ‘successful failure’ in that they didn’t reach the moon, but the three astronauts, Lovell, Swigert and Haise, got home safely.

And they got home, I believe, because of collaboration in its purest sense.

Just after getting the ‘problem’ news, and checking and hoping there were simply reporting malfunctions, Flight Director Gene Kranz (as played beautifully by Ed Harris in the movie) assigns teams to work on solutions with only the gear the astronauts have on board. In the movie we see only a short scene:

Several technicians dump boxes containing the same equipment and tools that the astronauts have with them onto a table
Technician 1: We’ve got to find a way to make this
[square CSM LiOH canister]
Technician 2: fit into the hole for this
[round LEM canister]
Technician 3: … using nothing but that.

The rest of the engineering takes place off camera, but we can imagine what it was like:

Technician 1: Well, we’ve got three meters of g17 tubing to start…

Technician 2: and if that’s too small we can hook it up with the FCG-420 …. and so on until they made it work.

I can also imagine what it wasn’t like:

Technician 1: Well, we’ve got three meters of g17 tubing to start.

Technician 2: No, that won’t work. Too small. (Thinking, I don’t want his idea to win. I wanna be the one who comes up with the solution.)

Technician 3: You’re both wrong. You’re looking at it from the wrong direction. (Thinking: these guys are total dopes and they’re going to make me look bad to the boss.) …and so on until Lovell, Swigert and Haise ran out of air, or fell into the ocean, or hit the entry trajectory wrong and were hurtled right back out into space.

My guess is that the guys on the ground weren’t worried about career limiting moves, one-upsmanship, or even being on the “winning team” which engineered the solution. My guess is that they were worried about one thing and one thing only: how do we bring these guys home?

True collaboration means taking the best of all the individual ideas, and from that building the very best solution. It’s not compromise, a watering down, but playing off one another’s ideas and work to build something better than any one person could have done alone. It’s the highest intersection of cooperation and assertiveness.

What made collaboration work?

First, it’s no coincidence that the space missions were called missions. They weren’t projects or details or jobs, but missions. It took over 400,000 people to get a spacecraft launched, and all of them had a clear and common goal.

Second, there was a terrible sense of urgency that become even more intense in the Apollo 13 crisis: the clock was ticking , and crafting a solution was truly life-and-death.

Third, they had in Kranz a Flight Director who was both a manager and a leader. Once the doors were shut in ground control at the beginning of a launch, he reportedly told the ground crew: “Gentlemen, I will support every decision you make.” And in the movie:

NASA Director: This could be the worst disaster NASA’s ever faced.

Gene Kranz: With all due respect, sir, I believe this is gonna be our finest hour.

Trust and Virtual Teams

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I recently read a fascinating article on Virtual Success: The Keys to Leading from a Distance.  (Yes, you do need to give your contact info, but I trust the authors not to sell or misuse your email address.) Darleen DeRosa and her colleagues at Onpoint Consulting  have recently completed a study of 48 virtual teams in 16 organizations around the globe.

What they were looking for is what distinguishes highly effective virtual teams and team leaders from those that are marginally effective or completely ineffective. In the study, they’ve identified the unique challenges of the manager who has team members spread out around the globe, and the six behaviors that differentiate the highly effective virtual team managers.

Not surprisingly, communication was overwhelming cited as the key competency for the effective managers.
Building relationships, building trust, being personally accountable and having a results orientation were also cited.

Six Behaviors and Twenty-four Performance Enhancers

The study identified six behaviors and 24 specific actions of the most effective leaders; I want to concentrate on one of each.

Among the six competencies, or behaviors, one key is fostering an atmosphere of collaboration among team members.

The most effective leaders of virtual teams … establish a culture of accountability in which roles and expectations are clear and there is zero tolerance for blaming others or finger pointing. [T]eam members can raise problems and admit mistakes without fear of retribution. … Effective leaders of virtual teams build an environment of trust within the team, which further enhances collaboration.

And my own favorite enhancer, under Support, Engagement and Recognition is this one:

Focus on moving from task-based trust to interpersonal trust by communicating openly and honestly, leading by example, employing consistent team interactions, and being accessible and responsible.

I love the notion of moving from task trust (“I trust that Mark will get his piece done on schedule”) to interpersonal trust (“I trust that Mark will raise a flag if he sees any difficulty, and will keep me fully in the loop. And if I ask for his help on this problem that has me stumped, I know I’ll get help, discretion and no attitude.”)

All of this adds up, it seems to me, to creating a safe atmosphere akin to what we call Intimacy and Transparency. And that adds up to true collaboration.

 

What a Trust-based Company Looks Like

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The tone of this blog is frequently critical. That’s probably because I believe we all learn much better from negative examples than from positive.
But if you don’t have any positive examples with which to contrast, we can easily forget why negative is negative. So the occasional positive blogpost is especially important. And this one is a real upper.

PSA: Pediatric Services of America

Last week I had the privilege of working with a very fine small company, PSA Healthcare. They deliver home health care for medically fragile people, mostly children. They have about 3,500 private duty nurses, operating from 50 locations in 17 states. What they do can make an enormous difference to families, allowing them to lead normalized lives under difficult conditions.

But having a great mission alone doesn’t make for a fine company. A lot of what makes PSA fine is that they are intentionally and consciously using trust principles to run the business. They are not only making a lot of people very happy and proud, they are doing very well by classic business measures. A fine case of doing well by doing good.

Let’s start with the metrics, go on to the principles, and end up with the real punch lines.

The Numbers. Jim McCurry started as CEO a little over a year ago, when PSA had been declining in revenue, market share, and profitability. Previous management was a classic top-down, measure-by-the-numbers team that had, simply put, failed.

The old style was that each month the bottom-performing offices were required to ‘justify’ themselves on a conference call to the top management. At the annual meeting, office heads were required to double-up on hotel rooms. Orders were given, decisions had to be approved up the line, and the style was management by FIN—fear, intimidation and numbers.

By the end of McCurry’s first year—at the tail end of a recession—revenue steadily increased, reaching a 20% annual rate of growth by year-end, all of it volume-based. The company increased profitability, more than doubled total profits, and turned the market share decline into market share gain. Staff morale is up enormously. Expenses are down.

Bottom line: really solid business results.

The Principles. How did McCurry do it? It was not the classic MBA turnaround medicine of tightening up, taking control, and cutting expenses. Instead, Jim told the staff the following:

“From now on, this company is run for the customer. The office heads work for the customer, and the rest of leadership works for them. Make your own decisions, and we’ll help you make them. Don’t wait for us to tell you what to do, you figure out what to do and do it—we trust you. No more intimidation, no more review boards.

“Our new mission has three parts: Action-oriented, Care-giving, and Trust-based.” (It spells ACT: coincidence? Of course not).

The annual meeting I was privileged to be part of was full of hokey-yet-fun skits, honesty, mutual helping, and positive energy.

The Punch Lines.  McCurry is an MBA. A Harvard MBA, actually, from a year after Dubya’s vintage.

The company’s owners are two private equity firms; the head of one of these is dedicated to the business in large part because his mother had been born so prematurely that she likely would have died were it not for the in-home nursing care she received in the first weeks of life.

This is a profitable business, not a charity. It is being run like a real business; like a real business ought to be, I should say, because too many businesses are being run the way PSA used to be run.

It’s refreshing to see an example of the much maligned du jour—MBAs and private equity—using modern, “squishy” leadership and management principles to improve life and the bottom line in parallel.

Collaboration, ethics, trust, openness, honesty, integrity—these are not fuzzy phrases, uttered by bureaucrats, wealthy Hollywood stars, or mega-rich Googlish do-gooders. These are utterly workable principles that deliver the best results around. They give capitalism a good name. Collaborative capitalism, I like to call it.

McCurry and PSA Healthcare deserve their success.

 

Collaboration: Trust Matters Interview with Brandon Klein

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I first met Brandon Klein when we were swamped processing people at the outset of the Trust Summit in NYC October 23. Some very nice guy came over and, simply, offered to pitch in and help. Which he then proceeded to do, and most ably.

That was Brandon, and it turns out, that was characteristic of him. He doesn’t just collaborate, he does collaboration. In particular, he’s something of an expert in the practical ways of organizing gatherings of human beings in ways that maximize output. That includes social dynamics, ergonomics, technology and psychology.

Since collaboration is one of the four Trust Principles, it’s of interest to us both.

CHG: Let’s start big: how do you define collaboration?

BK: Collaboration is repeating the assumed and then stating the unspoken. It is envisioning what success can be and then understanding how to work together to make it happen. It is sometimes best understood by stating what it’s NOT: It is not about latest social media software (chasing the shiny new thing), it’s not more meetings about meetings or guessing games/”strategizing” about what the boss might be thinking. Collaboration is defining and aligning on a common objective as a group of stakeholders and then openly, selflessly, working towards achieving it in a fun, social, interactive, barrier-less way.

CHG: How did you come to be involved in this sort of thing?

BK: Like most, I was incredibly frustrated by the amount of time that was wasted at work. Though most workplace environments boasted a team approach, I couldn’t accept that collaboration meant spending 95% of my day sitting in a cubicle and/or conference room. In searching for a better way, I was lucky enough to be one of the original people to learn the collaborative process known as a DesignShop™- in my opinion, the best off-line collaborative methodology in existence today.

CHG: Why do you think collaboration is ‘hot’ these days?

BK: The proliferation of web-based tools has definitely made the concept of collaboration more top-of-mind. Everyone can now be “collaborative” with a couple clicks of the mouse (or cell phone). It’s similar to the effect of television on sports. Once upon a time, you either had to play the sport or plan in advance to make the journey to the stadium to cheer for your team and interact with the fans. Now, you simply need to press a button on your TV’s remote. Fan bases have increased dramatically, but so has their average weight!

We’ve managed to make online collaboration hot and successful, but we have quickly forgotten what it means to collaborate in person. We can comment anonymously online, but can’t say why we are so ineffective at work. We can “Reply All” to make it look like we are involved, but can’t cut a meeting short that isn’t going anywhere.

CHG: Your focus is primarily on people getting together, isn’t it? Is technology changing that?

BK: Even with using Cisco’s Telepresence (which is awesome) it is very difficult to say that technology has changed ‘getting together’ yet. Yes, online conversations are fantastic and improving everyday. However, I focus on meetings with 12 to 120 people in the same room. Technology has little effect on face-to-face meetings, and in most cases makes them worse. This is because although we have created new tools and ways of working online, we haven’t developed ways of interacting better in person. It is commonplace and therefore acceptable to sit behind a conference table and read your blackberry, while calling the meeting successful and collaborative. It is crazy!

CHG: Let’s talk about conventional meetings; what’s the biggest mistake people make?

BK: Agendas, PowerPoint and WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Distraction ie phones/crackberry’s) are the 3 most unproductive tools on the planet when it comes to meetings. Additionally things most people don’t even consider such as tables, tardiness and tight-lips, are pretty bad too. Here are the quick reasons:

  • Agendas mean people know when to check out or worry/dread what comes next. Don’t publish agendas to more than 3-4 of the key people responsible for the output of the entire project/strategy etc.
  • PowerPoint puts people to sleep. Unless you are good enough to speak at TED, just don’t use it. Tell a story. Have a discussion about the main points instead. Put the bullet points in large all caps letters on a flip chart. Or better yet, create a visual to represent everything.
  • Technology in the pocket. Humans can’t multi-task. Seen the statistics on text messaging and driving? 23 times more dangerous than being drunk. You don’t want your meeting attendees drunk do you?
  • Tables. If people don’t need to eat lunch or take incredibly copious notes and have stacks of paper in front of them, why put a barrier between every person?
  • Tardiness. This could be replaced with excuses. If you show up late, everyone has to catch you up… wasting everyone’s time.
  • Tight-lips. Water cooler talk is the essence of a company and the harbinger for the success of the project. Bring it out into the open and every meeting and project will succeed.

CHG: How about big-group seminars and shows and conventions; do you see a few big things happening there?

BK: Unfortunately, there hasn’t been enough change. The ‘sit and get’ model is SAFE and so it is almost always what you see. Large-scale collaborative events of any kind are really quite rare. People are afraid to foster interactivity, or to relinquish control. A giant PowerPoint screen is a sense of comfort and power.

CHG: What’s the role of technology? Are twitter feeds good or bad? Is cloud computing affecting things?

BK: I love all of this technology. Twitter Feeds, Google Waves, Live-Blogging, etc, they are all great additions to any group gathering. Their popularity means they are being included by default right now, which can often be more distracting then useful. Their incorporation needs to be strategically designed. Unfortunately, just throwing out features doesn’t produce collaborative, successful output.

CHG: What’s your view of collaboration and how it fosters trust? Or do you see it the other way ‘round?

BK: Perhaps this is the classic case of the chicken and the egg. People must trust in order to collaborate better. And true collaboration will lead to stronger trust. But collaboration only works when people share openly and honestly. In the end, companies, managers, employees need to be willing to change the status quo in order for foster true collaboration… they need to trust each other.

CHG: Many thanks, Brandon, and let’s pursue some of this further another time.

 

For more information on Brandon Klein and the collaboration information he and his colleagues provide, check out his website at CollaborationKing.com

Bettelheim, Suicide and Online Social Media

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iStock_000008859658Small.jpgDepending on who you talk to, TwitBook, LinkFace and their ilk are responsible either for:

a. the death of attention, intimacy and civility; or
b. the coming of the Age of Collaboration.

We have seen this movie before, and it’s interesting to re-read the reviews from the past.

Does Living in a Highly Interactive Society Make You Neurotic?

In 1969, psychologist Bruno Bettelheim,  in Children of the Dream, wrote about children of the Israeli kibbutzim.  As Wikipedia summarizes it:

[Bettelheim] concluded that a kibbutz upbringing led to individuals’ having greater difficulty in making strong emotional commitments thereafter, such as falling in love or forming a lasting friendship. On the other hand, they appear to find it easier to have a large number of less-involved friendships, and a more active social life.

Makes sense in a simple kind of way. More interactions makes you good at shallow relationships, worse at deep ones. Presenting psychological problems are largely neurotic. A society that mistakes familiarity for intimacy.

Does Living in Highly Isolated Society Make You Psychotic?

About the time I read Bettelheim, I also read Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip,  a disturbing book that combines 19th century photographs taken in Black River Falls, Wisconsin between 1890 and 1910, with archival frontier newspaper articles from the same era. 

The result: old glass negative plates of a 6-year old in a tiny coffin, juxtaposed with news articles like:

"Mrs. Carter… was taken sick at the marsh last week and fell down, sustaining internal injuries which have dethroned her reason. She has been removed to her home here and a few nights since arose from her bed and ran through the woods… A night or two after she was found trying to strangle herself with a towel… It is hoped the trouble is only temporary and that she may soon recover her mind." And

"The 60 year old wife of a farmer in Jackson, Washington County, killed herself by cutting her throat with a sheep shears."

Lesy himself, according to a former student quoted in the Amazon book review, stated that in assembling the book, he was observing “an American holocaust.”

Makes sense in a simple kind of way. Fewer interactions may make you powerfully vested in a few relationships, but unable to interact easily on a casual level. Presenting psychological problems are largely psychotic. A society that mistakes intimacy for ease.

Must We Choose Between Social Media and Intimacy?

Is this a trade-off?  If you’re a kibbutznik or you tweet, does that mean you’re bad marriage material (what about to other twitterers?).   And if you’re capable of deep emotions living alone with a few people in closed quarters in the long frontier wintertime, does that mean you’re hopeless when it comes to simple social skills like having conversation?

I hear the arguments pro and con. I wish we could reframe the problem away from a zero-sum, either-or trade-off problem, to one that dares to be great: how can we harness both?

How can we get really good at getting along—and not only not lose the capacity for deep connection and intimacy, but make it grow stronger right alongside?

I will note this: Bettelheim predicted the kibbutzniks would be massively unsuccessful; but as the data showed, Bettelheim was massively wrong. They were exceptionally successful. 

Methinks there is hope for us.
 

Pin the Credit on Someone Else

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Let loose your favorite search engine on the phrase “pin the blame.” Wikipedia alone will serve you up thousands of examples, like this, from their entry on The Bourne Identity:

While in reality it was the U.S. government who took Marie captive, it has pinned the blame on a fictitious powerful Chinese drug lord…

It’s a common enough phrase that we don’t think about it much. But on reflection, it has two implications:

  1. the verb “pin”—to narrow down, narrow in on, focus, sharpen, highlight, single out, point to
  2. the object “blame”—guilt, condemnation, disapproval, (negative) responsibility, culpability, fault, shame

Basically: to bring down on another a concentrated dose of social pressure as being the primary cause of something really bad.

Pinning the Credit

So I’m in the car the other day (pulled over—don’t tweet and drive), in the midst of a twit-up with Rebecca Woodhead (@rebeccawoodhead). She had quoted Chris Brogan to a client, which had the effect of convincing the client to do what Brogan had suggested.

Which happened to be what Rebecca herself had been telling the client–apparently for some time—to no avail.

Full of good British humor about it, she jested, “I guess I should have thought to pin the credit on Brogan earlier.”

Pin the credit. I love it. Puts it right up there with “fancy a cheeky pint?” in my list of favorite Britticisms.

And higher still in my list of wisdom-bites. Pin the credit:

Basically: to divert to another a concentrated dose of social approval for being the primary cause of something really good.

Pinning the Credit, Reciprocity, and Collaboration

A willingness to pin the credit on another is a deceptively simple way to achieve several goals. First—as Rebecca’s example perfectly shows—it can often get things done faster, breaking a logjam by bringing in a third party or an appeal to authority.

Second, it signals a willingness to subordinate your own ego—something as valuable as it is rare in consultative and sales and support people. The client picks up that signal very clearly.

Third, it signals something to the credited party too. It says you recognize and value them, and that you’re willing to do them a favor. And favors invite reciprocal favors.

Fourth, that whole favor-giving thing requires a time perspective longer than the transaction at hand. By showing you’re willing to play that game, you suggest a plethora of ways to work together going forward. You can collaborate.

Pinning the credit shows you are polite, you can defer gratification, you are not in the game for your own ego, you can be trusted to collaborate because you’re in it for the long haul.

A powerful three words, I’d say.

Pin the Credit on Someone Else

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Let loose your favorite search engine on the phrase “pin the blame.” Wikipedia alone will serve you up thousands of examples, like this, from their entry on The Bourne Identity:

While in reality it was the U.S. government who took Marie captive, it has pinned the blame on a fictitious powerful Chinese drug lord…

It’s a common enough phrase that we don’t think about it much. But on reflection, it has two implications:

  1. the verb “pin”—to narrow down, narrow in on, focus, sharpen, highlight, single out, point to
  2. the object “blame”—guilt, condemnation, disapproval, (negative) responsibility, culpability, fault, shame

Basically: to bring down on another a concentrated dose of social pressure as being the primary cause of something really bad.

Pinning the Credit.

So I’m in the car the other day (pulled over—don’t tweet and drive), in the midst of a twit-up with social media columnist Rebecca Woodhead (@rebeccawoodhead). She had quoted Chris Brogan, another social media consultant, to a client, which had the effect of convincing the client to do what Brogan had suggested–which happened to be what Rebecca herself had been telling the client for some time, to no avail

Full of good British humor about it, she jested, “I guess I should have thought to pin the credit on Brogan earlier.”

Pin the credit. I love it. Puts it right up there with “fancy a cheeky pint?” in my list of favorite Briticisms.

And higher still in my list of wisdom-bites. Pin the credit:to divert to another a concentrated dose of social approval for being the primary cause of something really good.

Pinning the Credit, Reciprocity, and Collaboration

A willingness to pin the credit on another is a deceptively simple way to achieve several goals. First, as Rebecca’s example perfectly shows, it can often get things done faster, breaking a logjam by bringing in a third party or an appeal to authority.

Second, it signals a willingness to subordinate your own ego, something as valuable as it is rare in consultative and sales and support people. The client picks up that signal very clearly.

Third, it signals something to the credited party too. It says you recognize and value them, and that you’re willing to do them a favor. And favors invite reciprocal favors.

Fourth, that whole favor-giving thing requires a time perspective longer than the transaction at hand. By showing you’re willing to play that game, you suggest a multitude of ways to work together going forward. You can collaborate.

Pinning the credit shows you are polite, you can defer gratification, you are not in the game for your own ego, you can be trusted to collaborate because you’re in it for the long haul.

A powerful three words, I’d say.