Blog Moved - jaredlarson.com

I have moved my blog to jaredlarson.com.

I am self-hosting it now.

It took all weekend to get the site up and running.  Don't believe people when they say it is easy.

J

What Is Your Waffle House Index?

Recently the Wall Street Journal had a great story by Valerie Bauerlein called How to Measure a Storm's Fury One Breakfast at a Time.  


The story explains that one of the index's that FEMA uses to track recovery from a disaster is how quickly Waffle House restaurants come back online.

"If you get there and the Waffle House is closed?" FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate has said. "That's really bad. That's where you go to work."

I was fascinated to read how the chain prepositions supplies outside of storm areas, works with a limited menu in areas without power, and generally works hard to provide a place of refuge from any disaster.

This made me start to think about what my "Waffle House Index" is during presentations, or when I communicate.

During presentations I have the "Blackberry Index".  Take the number of people in the room and if Blackberry usage is great than 20% of your participants, you have a problem.  You solve this problem in a couple of different ways.

1. Know your material so well that you can actually pay attention to how people are responding to it.
2. When the Blackberry Index hits 20% drop in a statistic or a story.  These tend to grab the crowd and bring them back.
3. Speed up a bit.  People listen at a rate that is twice as fast as you can talk, and think 10 times faster than that.  Speeding up a bit catches peoples attention and helps them pay attention.
4. Vary the pitch and tone of your voice more.  If you drop down and start to speak softly the Blackberry folks will notice this and look up to see what is happening.
5. Add some complexity.  When we start with a simple message, sometimes an audience will dismiss it.  By adding another layer of complexity you can lever up the attention it takes to understand the information.  It will also bring questions to the audiences mind that will then allow you to start with simple answers and then add depth.

Clip the Waffle House story and add it to your Evernote account.  Tag it as a story, company history, and with WSJ as it's source.  What is really interesting is that in the South, Waffle House and Chick-fil-a a stories that win with audiences.  Use them.

Who Would You Hire?

This young man is a star soccer goalie at my son's High School.  He is over 6 feet tall with a tremendous wingspan.  During warmups he was like a wall in front of the goal, nothing got past him.  During the first few minutes of play he shut the other team down with his ability to direct his team's defense.

He allowed three goals during the game.

This is the goalie for the East Rowan Mustangs.  He is at least six inches shorter, has a moderate wingspan and did an OK job during warmups.  About 30 percent of the shots I saw got past him.  He was pretty quiet during the first period as the center sweeper and the center fullbacks seemed to have a good handle on the defense.

He allowed six goals during the 78 minutes of the game.

During the last two minutes something happened that left me deeply impressed with the East Rowan player.

Making The Message Simple

I was humbled today.

I enjoy taking pictures of the various sports teams at my sons high school.  I have a Canon 40d and a "big" lens so I am allowed on the sidelines of all the games.

I have been thinking about getting a newer Canon camera that is better for photographing sports.   It is called the Canon Mark IV and it shoots 10 frames per second.  It is amazing.  It is so much better then my little 40d which "only" shoots 6.5 frames a second.

Before I left my house to shoot a soccer game I sat down to "glance" through my owner's manual. I wanted to understand a bit more about the auto focus points inside my camera's viewer.  Well, much to my chagrin, I happened upon the section that dealt with the setting for the number of pictures the camera will take continuously. I was horrified to read that for four plus years I had the camera on the 3 frames per second setting not the 6.5 frames per second.

So tonight I took my humbled self down to the stadium and was amazed at how my "new' camera performed.  I just saved myself several thousand dollars, by reading a simple instruction manual.

This experience made me think about my "Nothing New" sales retreat.  How many times have we put ourselves on auto pilot and done something the same way without even thinking about other data or potential steps in our process?

When you communicate with people, respect them by breaking your message down to its most simple state.  Then add complexity as you see understanding.