I had the opportunity this week to stay at Toronto’s Drake Hotel and we had a fantastic time. I had never heard of the Drake Hotel although it has the sort of name that sounds familiar to me. I found it on Trip Advisor and every other hotel in Toronto was full. I never did figure out why everything was booked, but the Drake Hotel seemed like a good fit for us. I picked up my chef daughter from her job in Muskoka and we spent 2 nights and 3 days together in Toronto. We checked in on Sunday afternoon. The hotel is small, charming, and has multiple restaurants and bars full of trendy, interesting people. We were given a room on the 3rd floor. We were surprised to find out there is no elevator so we trekked up the stairs and found a lovely but small, very cool guest room. We were greeted with complimentary sparkling wine on ice and the room was full of interesting items for purchase as well as a fun “mini-bar” area full of tasty beverages and snacks. The design concept really stood out and we felt like we were not quite cool enough for our hip accommodations. That said, Jonathan the manager greeted us warmly every time he saw us and made us feel incredibly welcome. He hugged us when we left–we felt loved and cared for in this fun hipster hotel. I am not sure we were cool enough for our surroundings, but we felt welcome and enjoyed its charm. We ate breakfast twice in their cafe and the food was fantastic. I only wish we had the energy to explore more of what was going on. There is a roof-top bar that looked very fun. We heard happy people partying late into the night. This didn’t bother us, it was kind of fun–like falling asleep on the couch during a really great party. During our stay, there was an open mike and a pickle contest...
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DISC is a personality profiling system that takes its name from four personality attributes: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance. DISC can be used in development and training, to elevate communication, to raise self-awareness and increase team cohesiveness. Recently, I had the opportunity to work with a company whose product requires considerable collaboration with clients. The product is beautiful, and it really fills a niche. Unfortunately, the company also has a problem. Clients are repeatedly unhappy with the customer service they receive. Essentially, clients have a low perceived value for the product they are purchasing because their experience of the process is not optimal. I worked with the production team to really hear what was happening and suggested we use the DISC system to bring clarity to the situation. I chose DISC in this case because the team seemed to be aligned and functioning well; it was their interaction with the customer that was problematic. Each team member filled out a DISC profile. We followed this with some training about the tool and then the profiles were shared with fellow team members. We discovered the person with the lowest natural aptitude for connecting with people (lowest on the ‘I’, or ‘influence’, scale) was the client’s primary client contact—the project coordinator. This explained the clients’ perception of poor customer service. After taking some time to digest and understand each others’ profiles, this team rolled up their sleeves and came up with some solutions. Their solutions seemed to fit two categories: 1. Coach the coordinator on some of the behaviors that create higher connection with the client and 2. Have the other team members who had more customer service-oriented profiles (high ‘I’ profiles) connect more directly with the client. This team was able to address a serious issue with no blaming or finger-pointing. They were able to find solutions that were both specific and comprehensive and they were able to begin implementing the solutions immediately because there was universal buy-in from the team. The coordinator didn’t have...
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Someone told me recently that in business, the ones and threes are hard. “What does that mean?” I asked. “It’s the ones and threes that matter.” He said. “When you first start in business, it is really hard to get to $100,000. You have to figure it out. After you get to $100,000, you have to change almost everything in order to get to $300,000. Then, everything has to change again in order to get to a million in annual revenue. After a million, everything has to change again to get to 3 million, and so on….” “That’s really interesting,” I said. “It’s true for employees, too. The first one is hard, then it is hard at three, then ten, then thirty. The ones and threes are hard for employees, too.” “Hmmm,” I said. I love this. It fits exactly with what I do as a coach. Probably the biggest One in business is the very first dollar and the hardest employee is the first one. That is why so many businesses hang their first $1 bill on the wall and why so many entrepreneurs think, “I’ll just do it myself!” In order to take that first $1 bill, all the parts of the business have to be in place and operational. In order to hire the first employee, the business owner has to start making explicit what they have been doing intuitively. In my work as a business coach, I help people figure out what has to change in order to get to the next milestone. Many times there are a few levers that free the business up to slide more easily to the next level. I start with businesses that are ready to reach for a new level. Often, I come into the business around the ones or the threes. With business owners who are pretty successful at the $100,000-300,000 range, I find a leader who has big dreams and who wants to leave some kind of legacy–they want to bring...
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I just completed a 30 day challenge at the Moksha Yoga Hamilton studio. I don’t know if I have ever fallen so hard for a brand before. This brand has stolen my heart. It all started when I found myself suddenly at loose ends with my exercise program, as I had stopped one thing and was looking for something else. I decided to sign up for 21 days of yoga at Moksha Yoga for $30. (I think the price may be even better now) I didn’t really plan to join, but it seemed to be a great thing to do and then I would have 21 more days to figure out what I wanted to do next. That was all well and good, but then they gave me a little card with prizes to be won and I figured out that if I attended 21 times in 21 days, my first month was free. Hmmm! That would be awesome! And I like a challenge. Jordan, the woman who led my first class, gave me great information about lying down on the mat when I was too hot. She helped me to feel safe and welcome and like I belonged there. I won’t talk about my yoga journey here. You can read that here if you want to. Right now, I want to talk about my experience with the Moksha Brand. After the first day, I felt like coming back the next day. I also learned that I never wanted to leave hot yoga again without showering first… UGHH! I came back again and again. Each teacher was welcoming, kind, loving, and seemed genuinely excited by my journey. This summer we went to a French Immersion Family Language School in Sancerre, France. While we were there, my family talked about the skill the teachers had of acting genuinely impressed by our French, which drove us forward and helped us try things that felt new or foreign without feeling self-conscious. The teachers at Moksha have this...
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For the last couple of years I have been doing some work with a great guy named Kevin Behr who wrote The Phoenix Project. He works in the space of IT and continuous improvement and helps organizations get better at what they do. One of the ways they get better fast is to control Work in Progress or WIP, which led me to the concept of “Kanban” (rhymes with bonbon) and I’ve been curious about it for a while now. What’s a Kanban, you might ask… Here’s what Wikipedia has to say: Kanban (かんばん(看板)?) (literally signboard or billboard) is a scheduling system for lean and just-in-time (JIT) production.[2]Kanban is a system to control the logistical chain from a production point of view, and is not an inventory control system. Kanban was developed by Taiichi Ohno, at Toyota, to find a system to improve and maintain a high level of production. Kanban is one method through which JIT is achieved.[3] Kanban became an effective tool in support of running a production system as a whole, and it proved to be an excellent way for promoting improvement. Problem areas were highlighted by reducing the number of Kanban in circulation. That all sounds great for manufacturing, right? But why would I want a personal Kanban? I asked Kevin for a book recommendation to further explore the Kanban concept and he recommended Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life by Jim Benson. It is about using a Kanban system to help organize the complex and disparate tasks we all juggle. That is why last night I woke up in the middle of the night and spent a couple of hours creating my own personal Kanban. This book is almost diabolically simple and yet offers a solution to the management of life’s complexity by “managing work.” This idea of calling the complex lists of tasks in my life “work” helps me think about them in a new way. The book suggests we can only focus on one task at a time, thus we should only be actually working on a small number of tasks at any...
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If I had to pick a most favorite restaurant in the world, I think this would be it. It isn’t fancy or even innovative. It is always the same, never changing. And yet, when someone does something this well, why would they need to change? They are completely dependable, fabulously delicious, spicy, flavorful and amazing. When I was at the University of New Mexico over 20 years ago, I ate there a lot. It was cheap, delicious, and a pretty good place to study. Now, I often wake up on Saturday morning and wish for a Frontier Restaurant breakfast burrito. This morning during a visit to Albuquerque, I got my wish. I woke up and made my way to the Frontier on Central Avenue. It was as good as I remember—it always is. The building itself is iconic. Rumor is they bought it during the Vietnam War era when anti-war protesters were smashing all the windows on Central Ave. and real estate prices plummeted. The restaurant takes up an entire city block right across the street from the University of New Mexico which has about 30,000 students. It has 7 rooms. The loudest room is the front where you order at the counter. I stood around trying to get a table in the front room. I wanted it for the people watching. I scored! Back further in the restaurant the rooms get progressively quieter with student study groups working in the very back. The walls are covered in tacky southwestern art including several paintings of John Wayne. It is fantastically visually stimulating. It is not unusual to see a homeless guy sitting at a table next to business men in suits. On this Saturday morning, the restaurant was pretty full. Everyone loves the Frontier. There seems to be a magical flow that no matter how full it is, you can always get a table. I am sure they have figured out how to make this work. People order at the counter and always find a...
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