Bill Jensen's Blog

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You ain’t seen nuttin’ yet

I’ve been researching and consulting on corporate change, change

management, and creating the future of work for more than a quarter

century. And the tune has always been the same: “Prepare for the big

change! The next few years is gonna be it!”



Blah, blah, blah. While change definitely has been becoming more volatile,

faster, and more urgent… Somehow leadership behaviors and corporate

systems still lagged way behind. AKA: “You, the workforce, must change

at lightspeed pace, but don’t expect our legacy systems and legacy leader

behaviors to keep up with you. Now, run along.”



Well, mark 2017 in your calendars as the Good Ol’ Days. All that is really

gonna change — at a whipsawing, headsnapping pace.



A recent study by Cognizant has analyzed what AI and the cognitive era

will do to corporate change. The next 40 months of exponential growth

in digitization and machine learning will “fundamentally change how

businesses create value, satisfy customers, and outperform competitors.”



• Now: Disruptive Tech Transformation



• 2017—2020: Age of Hyper-Transformation



• 2020—2025: Age of Ubiquitous Transformation

Cognizant says that to succeed in the Age of Hyper-Transformation,

companies must “…speed the tempo of operations beyond human time to

digital time. The demands for digital time require humans to upgrade

IT environments and augment their capabilities with AI and robotic

process automation (bots) to enable mass volumes of transactions

to be processed in milliseconds in order to support real-time

and mobile environments.”



Translation: Buckle up!



We’re all in for one helluva crazyass ride!

Alan Lepofsky, Future Strong Hero, tells us how

Alan Lepofsky, Future Strong Hero

Alan Lepofsky is Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.



Future Strong Hero Series: Insights from top leaders,

change makers, and thought leaders who are creating better,

bolder tomorrows.

• • • • • • • • • • •

What Do You Do?

I cover the future of work from the perspective of how employees manage

and enhance their own personal productivity as well as team collabation.

If I can help shape the way vendors create their software or help

companies decide how to implement it, then I’ve helped millions of

people work more productively.



How Do You Stay Future Strong?

At University of Toronto, I studied Mechanical Engineering. That gave me

incredible ways of problem-solving and thinking about information and how

things are structured. That analytic side helps me make sense of things.

So I rarely accept initial explanations of ‘that’s the way it is.’ I’m told

I’m constantly the first person at the white board — everything has to

have a picture explaining it.



Also, one of the biggest factors is surrounding yourself with a circle of

people smarter than you, and understanding their work and learning from

them. As a research analyst, I spend a lot of my time consuming information —

from social media, competitive analyses, university research labs, vendor

early tests and experiments, and more.



Finally, I try to stay pragmatic. Even though I’m in a field that’s about

pushing the boundaries and creating the future, I stay focused on helping

people leverage whatever they already have or will have within the next few

months, not just weaving incredible stories about what may come 20 years

from now.



What Are the Top Few Trends We Should Watch?



Artificial Intelligence: Once the buzz wears off, and we begin to see the

basic practical applications, it’s truly going to change the way people do their

jobs — how people work on their own, how teams collaborate.



If you think about the past decade… We’ve move to the cloud. OK, I can

access my files from anywhere, but I don’t really work that much differently.

Everything’s gone mobile. Cool, I can do a whole bunch of stuff from

anywhere, but it hasn’t truly changed most people’s actual work, or how

much is on your shoulders.



AI is poised to act on your behalf. It can take steps for you. It can

aggregate and scan options, and offer options and recommendations you

never would have had before. All this is still in the early days, so it’s

important to be grounded in reality vs. buzz.



Where Budgets Are Set: HR now has a lot more input into software

purchases than they did a decade ago — looking at how to improve

performance, how to rank and reward performance, how to keep employees

happy, where they work from. Budgeting priorities are definitely changing.



Back to the Future: Software doesn’t have to be deployed at the enterprise

level anymore. We’re going back to the days when there were more

departmental solutions. Look at the success of Slack — decisions to use

it and how to use it are being made at small group levels. Even the

primary communication, calendaring and productivity systems — G-Suite,

Office 365, IBM’s Smart Cloud — are updated in real time with cloud-

based rollouts, so there’s no need for an IT-driven rollout. Even

centralized systems will feel a lot more personalized and local.



Analytics: The focus in the past was on delivering numbers to the C-Suite —

how the supply chain is doing, progress on sales quotas, reports for key

senior exec decisions. That’s not what analytics are anymore. We’re now

in the FitBit/Netflix Era, where regular people are seeing statistics

on their own performance or decision options. And that means we’re

going to see personalized statistics — who you work most effectively with,

who you email the most, who you should communicate with but haven’t,

what meetings actually led to changes sales or performance, which of

your files got used, and which didn’t. I believe people really want to

know these kind of things so they can better manage their own performance.



Future vs. Pragmatic Matters

We already have lots of the best tools in the world at our disposal, but

most work still runs off of email and file attachments. We can talk about

group messaging tools or enterprise social networking all we want, but

most everyone goes back to yesterday’s tools to get their work done.



How vendors create and drive these new tools is key to how much of the

future we adopt, and when. If they are able to bring together AI and

analytics, and make today’s tools more efficient and effective — like a

tool making new suggestions when I’m creating a PowerPoint presentation —

then we will see a shift. When we see personal digital assistants for

the average person is when these changes will take off.



Siri and Alexa have trained us to start thinking this way, and to start

expecting it. People are still really struggling with information overload.

It’s time to have an inbox that talks to you with your daily priorities,

and offers you quick and easy options. It’s 20 years after most of us had

an electronic inbox, and we’re still checking our spam folder to be sure

we didn’t miss anything.



The average user is not going to build their own solutions. That is why

it’s crucial for Google, IBM, Slack, Microsoft, Jive and others to make

the software do this for us. Nobody wants yet another tool, yet another

choice about how to get their work done. They want what they’re used

to made a lot easier.



Tough Choices Leaders Face

In the consumer world, consumers now have more power than the brands.

That’s beginning to happen inside the company as well. Employees have

more power than just showing up at work, with all their tools pre-

defined for them and locked-in. Performance instead of office face-

time matters so much more. [ROWE, Results Only Work Environments].



The C-Suite is waking up to giving employees even more flexibility

and freedom in achieving those results.



The biggest struggles I hear from leaders in achieving this is how to

create trust paired with accountability in these new environments.

How managers give assignments, leave freedom as to how to achieve the

results, and still hold people accountable for time-driven results.

That’s still a work-in-progress.



An Amazing Future Lies Ahead!

Someday, in the not too distant future, everyone will have access to

augmented interactions. So if I’m talking to you Bill, while we’re talking

I would also see your recent tweets, a summary of the last time we talked,

what you last published. Any information we view will have multiple layers

that we can easily explore.



Advances like these will change how everyone does their job. We won’t

need to wear headsets to have this experience. It will all be projected

onto our normal work surfaces, or in our contact lenses. We will soon move

from our 2-D screens into 3-D experiences. Ten years from now, the office

will be dramatically different than it is today!



Lepofsky Strongisms

• Keep questioning how big changes will be used by the average person

• The future is great, but remember to stay grounded in today’s everyday

challenges

• The future will arrive for everyone when vendors get focused on those

everyday challenges

Lucy Rogers, Future Strong Hero, tells us how

Lucy Rogers, Future Strong Hero

Lucy Rogers is Founder of Makertorium in the U.K., has a

Ph.D. in Fluid Mechanics, builds robot dinosaurs, and is author

of It’s ONLY Rocket Science.



Future Strong Hero Series: Insights from top leaders,

change makers and thought leaders who are creating better,

bolder tomorrows.

• • • • • • • • • • •

The Life of a Rocket Scientist: I make engineering fun. Which includes

earning my Ph.D. by blowing bubbles. I was working with a company that

made fire fighting equipment. They knew how to extinguish petrochemical

fires, but weren’t quite sure why it worked. I filmed the process with

high-speed video to analyze it.



I’m currently making 3-D printed mini-versions of London’s famed double

decker buses. By connecting them to the Internet, my models are linked

into the London transport system, which knows where every bus is at any

given moment. So the little bus starts flashing green when a bus is

getting close to your stop, or red if there are problems on your route.

The client did not want the phone-app version of this because she kept

getting distracted by everything else on her phone.



Recently, I worked with a theme park on the Isle of Wight, Blackgang Chine,

which had animatronic dinosaurs. One of the main dinosaurs went down,

and they called me in. We brought a whole team of hackers together —

volunteers from the maker community — and rebuilt it, and trained the

staff to reprogram the dinosaurs and fix things themselves. We also

included a Random mode, so park visitors could never tell what the T-Rex

would do. I like petrifying children! Toddlers, teenagers, and everyone

loved it — usually running away screaming!



What Are the Big Issues You’re Dealing With?

With the Internet of Things (IoT), you now get so much data from every

thing and every activity. The big issues revolve around what you want to

do with that data. Airlines are now putting RFID tags on your luggage,

so, with an app, you can now track your bag yourself all the time.

I see the coming era as: control is coming back to the user.



There are so many possibilities. Tracking everything will ultimately help

us make better use of all our resources — natural and man-made. My car,

which will be a shared car, will drop me off and go do other things while

I’m at work, and then come back for me when I’m ready to leave. If we’re

smart, this will help us find new ways to use a lot less.



This requires multiple things of us. One of which is more empathy.

Treating things, and the people who use them, with greater respect.



Many experts are thinking that IoT will create a surge in leasing almost

everything. Like you may soon lease your washing machine, and the

supplier will charge you per use, as well as upgrade it on a regular basis.



But will people treat those leased things as well as they treat things

they own? And will planned obselence of everything drive up the use

of resources instead of conserving them? We’ve got to be mindful of

these issues as we go forward.



What About Future of Work Issues?

Humans are built to be good at adapting and learning. Schools, society,

and workplaces force a lot of that out of us. But we’re still far better

at those things than any kind of robot or AI (Artificial Intelligence).

So, although robots will take over a lot of the less-skilled, manual

labor jobs — they’ll work 24×7 and don’t need sick days and holidays

and benefits — we’ll need people to come up with all the ideas that

will take us forward.



Right now, we simply are not investing enough in the people who will

be replaced by robots and in the training to helping them to adapt.

And this needs to begin in primary school. Less teaching them to

pass exams, and more teaching them the skills to continuously keep

learning and continuously adapt. Also, computer intelligence will

help tailor learning to each individual’s needs and learning styles.



We know that this is possible by looking at us as consumers. Ten or

more years ago, many senior citizens were not using email, now many

are happily using iPads and iPhones. If we make it easier for people

to change, and if it’s to people’s advantage to change, they will.




Play and fun are such a crucial part of this! In the

maker community, the tools are getting simpler

and more fun to use. For example, I’m a space

geek and a while ago I wanted something that

lit up when the International Space Station passed

overhead. I started learning how to do that because it was something

I wanted and was fun for me.



The Biggest Thing You’ve Learned About Our Future?

My hope, and what I try to help with, is that people start thinking

about how they can be creative. How you can start making the

world the way you want it to be, not just “they” should fix this.

“They” is us. “Us” is me. And I have to do something now.



More than anytime in the past, we have the tools to help everyone

do that. And if you don’t have the skills to do something yourself,

online communities — especially the maker community, which is all

about giving — are filled with people who will help.



Soon companies will stop needing to tell employees “You must

do this, you must do that,” and start asking its very creative

workforce, “How do we make this a better customer experience?

How can we make money? How do we make it more efficient?”



The challenge is not changing individuals. It’s changing culture,

so we’re leveraging all this change for the good of all. We still

have a ways to go there. Ultimately, we must all remember that

we’ve only got one planet. Being a maker to save resources isn’t

just about cost-effectiveness and productivity, it’s about saving

our one and only planet.



Rogers Strongisms

• Control is coming back to the user. How will you seize it?

• Humans are infinitely creative and adaptive. Most individuals

have that ground out of them. Regain your childlike creativity,

regain your future.

• Don’t wait for “them” to fix things!

Garry VanPatter, Future Strong Hero, tells us how

Garry VanPatter, Future Strong Hero

Garry VanPatter is Co-Founder of Humantific, a new breed of

SenseMaking-based Transformation Consultancy, and believes that

SenseMaking has become the 21st century fuel for ChangeMaking.



Future Strong Hero Series: Insights from top leaders,

change makers and thought leaders who are creating better,

bolder tomorrows.

• • • • • • • • • • •

Beginnings: My partner, Elizabeth Pastor, and I met while working with

TED founder Richard Saul Wurman, a pioneer in the sense-making business.

Elizabeth’s graduate degree thesis focused on how to facilitate inclusion,

which is the foundation of everything we do.



SenseMaking 101

We teach people how to make sense of the complexity that’s swirling

around them. Our work is based on the creative problem-solving insights

of W.J.J. Gordon, who created Synectics. He realized that there were two

different processes going on as we try to create and innovate.



There’s sense-making, which is making the strange familiar. (For

example, how we understand how to use new technologies, or how we

navigate a city in a foreign country.) Then there’s strange-making,

making something that seems familiar unique, different, and stand out

from the rest. (Company and product branding are good examples of this —

why one phone or one toothbrush is different from another.)



Most change consulting work is sense-making for leaders, managers,

and workers — where we help make the strange (disruptions, changes,

challenges) familiar to everyone and easier to execute.



The challenge is that most organizational and project leaders are trying

to solve things by assuming they know what the problem is before they

begin. We teach people that there are four levels of design problem-

solving, and Level 3: Organizational Transformation, and Level 4:

Social Transformation, require the most questioning of all the things

we think we ‘know’ about the problem. Many leaders have a difficult

time questioning their own assumptions about the challenges they

want help with.



Also: We’ve found that not every organizational leader is in love with

the idea of clarity. Many are into the spin thing — they want you to

see things their way. They can’t let go of the assumptions they’ve built

into the problem they’ve asked us to solve. Then you have an Emperor’s

New Clothes thing going on.



Human-centered design is delivering on empathy. In organizational

design and change, there’s still a lot of work to be done on empathy —

understanding that people have different thinking styles, different

ways of processing information.



SenseMaking in Organizations

Most organizational leaders already know that innovation is important.

But what they struggle with is how to make it real — how to maximize

and harness all the brainpower within their organizations.



First, we use a tool to help people surface their thinking style preferences.

You can’t do anything around change-making unless people deal with

their thinking styles. Those thinking styles are connected to what we do

everyday. Super simplified: Some people prefer divergence [expand,

broaden, explore], and some prefer convergence [narrow, focus, prioritize,

act].



Most organizations have mostly convergent thinkers — people who are

biased toward and place the most value on making decisions and acting

quickly. Leaders tend to treat convergence as the highest form of thinking.



But an era of innovation requires constant change, adaption, invention,

creation, agility — divergent thinking.



We help companies connect those two kinds of thinking. The convergent

thinkers [deciding, acting] need the divergent thinkers [expanding,

reimagining], and the divergent thinkers need the convergent thinkers.



Tough Choices Ahead for Leaders

Most leaders lack or need additional support in three specific areas:

• The ability to co-create in real time, across disciplines

• Greater empathy — how to get close to the people and the work

that needs to get done

• Visualizing problems and solutions



Too many leaders think these very complex needs can be solved with

a half-day workshop. The challenge is that fifty percent of adult

education is helping the person unlearn all that they think they already

know. That takes time and discipline.



TED talks, books, workshops are fine — but those are mindshift experiences.

What’s needed are skillshift experiences. That’s the piece in the middle

that’s missing in most organizations. Which leads ultimately to culture shifts.



VanPatter Strongisms

• SenseMaking is the way out and through all difficult changes

• SenseMaking begins with unlearning — letting go of ‘knowing’ what

you think the problem is and what you think the solution should be

• SenseMaking is creating new skillshift experiences



Additionally

• Institute for the Future research found that SenseMaking is one of the

top ten 2020 skills for everyone who works

• Jensen research found that business is avoiding SenseMaking so much,

that it’s as if companies are at war with their workforce

It’s your superpower in a world gone crazy, complex, caca!

For over two decades, I’ve consulted and coached and spoken to hundreds

of thousands of people, making things simpler for them. Here are five

ways that you, too, can be Mr. or Ms. Simplicity…



1.

Practice Disciplined Empathy and Common Sense

Simplicity is based on very basic human needs: Could this app be made

easier to use? Could this medicine container be made easier to

open and easier to read and understand? Can making a bank deposit be

made easier? The first step to making most anything simpler is to

walk a mile in the user’s/audience’s/customer’s shoes. And, as part

of that, focus on the basics. Making most things simpler isn’t

about solving world hunger. It’s about making each small step in

the process easier.



2.

Ask Just One Question

Steve Jobs was correct in his belief that customers can’t tell

you what they want when it relates to innovations such as the first

iPod or iPhone or iPad. But most complexities people encounter

can be addressed by simplifying something that already exists.

Ask your user/audience/customer just one question — “How can we

make this easier for you?” — and you will quickly learn what

simplicity looks like.



3.

Always Start with Time Poverty and Attention Deficit Disorder

Yes, there are bigger, more systemic, more entrenched problems

that need simplification. But if you focus on saving people time

and on capturing and using their attention wisely, you will never

go wrong. These are among the top two challenges that will always

benefit from simplification efforts.



4.

Always Give the User More Control

The more control that the user/audience/customer has over using

your product or service, the simpler it will be for them. (Assuming

you have diligently practiced Steps 1 and 2!)



5.

Joy and Great Experiences Trump Pain Reduction

Listen carefully to the responses you get in Step 2. Most people

will describe simplicity in terms of pain reduction. e.g., “This

medicine bottle cap is too hard to open.” or “I hate how long it

takes to download this.” Your job is to push past that because,

in the end, while people describe simplicity in terms of things

they want to reduce or get rid of… Growth in sales and reputation

is almost always based on the thrill of simplicity! Something that

truly excites!



FOR MORE

• Communication Tools: Speed-Freak Clarity

• How to Delete 75% of Your Emails

• The Ultimate Ten-Page Presentation

• Ten Simple Truths

• Jensen research, sponsored by SAP:

Building Simpler Corporate Cultures

The resources above are all free.



The following Fastpak resources require a small fee:

• Managing Your Manager

• How to Say No and Get Ahead

• How to Work Smarter by Asking the Right Questions

• Easy Ways to Build the Courage You Need to Work Smarter

• Leading Simply: New Basis

• Strategic Plan on One Page

Redefine your niche; So being the best is attainable

1.

Pre-Work: Watch Six Commencement Speeches

• Steve Jobs

• Jacqueline Novogratz

• JK Rowling

• Jim Carrey

• Jeff Bezos

• Neil Gaiman

You will be reminded of timeless truths which will carry you through

your quest to be the best.



2.

Be You: The Amazing You

Movie director Alfred Hitchcock once said “Drama is life with the dull bits

cut out.” The same applies to you being the best in the world. Accentuate

your most wondrous qualities and then amplify them.



Like how…

• The Mythbusters guys entertained us with experiments

• Richard Saul Wurman launched TED

• Salman Khan began reinventing education from his closet

• Lenny Bruce, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert showed us new

ways to see ourselves.

Redefining your market niche is you, with the dull bits cut out.



3.

Define Market Needs That You Alone Own

Define a set of market needs, established or new — (no one asked for

the first iPod, but one visionary saw a huge market for it) — so that

you (as envisioned in Step 2) are the perfect match in fulfilling

those needs.

• Market size must be connected to your dreams. (World domination

or best in your neighborhood?)

• Your goals should be tied your skillsets and strengths. (If you’re

tone deaf, it may not be realistic that you’ll be doing epic shit

as a musician.)



4.

Define True Success

Some who do epic shit achieve wealth or fame. Yet most are simply

striving to be the best version of themselves. Define true success

in terms of how much fun you have, or how comfortable and natural

it is to be that way, or what you’ve learned and experienced,

or who you’ve met and spent time with. Being the best you can be

will never be measured by market size or revenues. If those

happen to come your way — great. But true success is an awesome

journey!



5.

Deliver

Steve Jobs once said that “real artists ship.” Meaning: At the

end of the day, your product or service is only epic if you

actually deliver the goods. Great execution matters.

Manage Your Project Portfolio Differently

Whether you are in charge of your entire project flow (entrepreneurs,

ultra-empowered), or most of your projects get handed to you (typical

employee situation), most of us fall into a trap of letting our projects

define our workflow, and our future.



You absolutely must manage your project portfolio for your personal

success and for your future!



Designing Your 2017 Project Portfolio

We all know that our future will be filled with lots more disruptions,

lots more volatility, lots more chaos. The best way to organize your today

to prepare you for that future is by managing your project portfolio.



Think of your projects in much the same way you manage your long-term

financial portfolio. You and your financial advisor assess your tolerance

for risk and manage your investments accordingly. An ‘average’ investment

portfolio is likely to contain a small amount of high-risk/high-return

investments, a small amount of low-risk/lower-return investments, and

the majority, somewhere in the middle — not risky, but high enough

returns to help you get to your long-term goals.







Your projects need to be

managed in the same

way. Let’s say you do

ten projects per year,

and your focus is

‘average.’ To ensure

that you are future

strong, about one out

of every five projects

need to be beyond

your normal risk tolerance — bolder, riskier, more disruptive, greater

chance of failure, greater chance of ‘looking bad’ than your normal workload.



This is the bare minimum to be future strong: two out of every ten projects need to be outside your comfort zone, beyond what you

would normally seek out.



If you are not getting that from your manager, you must be proactive in

seeking out that kind of project!



You’re about to plan for success in 2017. If you end the year with less than

two out of every ten projects that began far outside your comfort zone,

then you’ll soon be joining the dinosaurs. You won’t be strong enough to

succeed in 2018. (BTW: The Elon Musks, Steve Jobs, and Walt Disneys of

the world fill their portfolio with eight or nine or ten out of every

ten projects with work beyond most people’s comfort-zones.)



It’s your responsibility to get the projects you need to ensure your

long-term success. Be proactive. Build a more disruptive project portfolio

for 2017 than you did in 2016. You’ll need it!

Troy Barnett, Future Strong Hero, tells us how

Troy Barnett, Future Strong Hero

Troy Barnett is Senior Director, Corporate Services Technology at

Under Armour. He was a defensive tackle for the New England Patriots, and was suddenly forced into a career transition…



Future Strong Hero Series: Insights from top leaders,

change makers and thought leaders who are creating better,

bolder tomorrows.

• • • • • • • • • • •

I had three surgeries in two weeks that ended my NFL career. It was time to

get a ‘real’ job. Fortunately, every summer I had interned in the IT

department at Reebok, honing my IT skills, and their CIO offered

me a job.



After multiple roles there, I got a call from Under Armour. I am employee

number 992, so I joined while we were still in our infancy.



In February 2012, we implemented five new HR systems globally. Since then,

my focus is on the strategic side — planning for the next three-plus years

and taking everything to new levels.



The Moment of Acceptance and Transition

Realizing that my NFL career was over was scary. I was angry. I pictured

my career heading to the Hall of Fame, and it didn’t happen that way.

It was over pretty quick. It took my five years before I could enjoy

football again as a fan.



It was hard. I talked to a lot of players trying to make that transition.

The statistics are that close to 80% of players will end up in bankruptcy

at some point after leaving football, divorce rates are close to 75%

after leaving. Drug and alcohol abuse is through the roof. Because

transitioning out of that intense environment is hard.



Most people won’t have to face that intense of a transition. But what

everyone will have to face is many transitions and restarts throughout

their careers. We all have to prepare ourselves for that, and keep

investing in ourselves.



What Makes You Future Strong?

First, never take yourself so seriously, that you can’t enjoy life.

Enjoy the simple things. Family. Friends. Find your passion!

It’s not work when you love what you do, baby!



Everyone’s life is about change, transitions, about going after

new challenges, and making a difference.



Focus on what’s important. I look at my daughters and I remember

thinking that when they were young, that I had plenty of time.

My oldest is now a senior in college. The time with them has gone

by so fast!



We all need to be able to reinvent ourselves. We die inside when

we accept the status quo. Never be stagnant. Hone your skills.

Meet people.



What Tough Choices Do Leaders Need to Make

to Keep Their Companies Strong?

Thinking about talent. Attracting, retaining, and investing

in the talent they already have. It costs so much to bring in

somebody new.



Train them and guide them to be the tomorrow’s leaders. It’s so

easy to rip out a system, or move a person, or make a change

instead of understanding each individual and their needs. It seems

like each time a new leader comes in, so few take the time to

really know who’s on their bench, and how to best utilize them.



Leaders who are able to ignite people’s passions, and invest in

the people they have, and push them to grow — those will be the

companies who will come up with innovations faster than the

competition. Everybody’s trying to do more with less… So it

becomes crucial to invest in your talent to do that.



What’s Different About Tomorrow’s Workforce?

They’ve grown up interconnected and connected from birth. They’re

expecting that kind of experience at their jobs, on their computer

platforms, on their teams, in their careers and in their lives.



Especially here at Under Armour: Average age at corporate is 32.

In our stores, it’s 21. We need to ignite our business by igniting

each and every employee. We need leaders who can do that.



Kevin Plank, our CEO, wakes up every day fired up…with the

mentality of a football player, a great coach: ‘Today I am

accountable for my day. I can make it great. Or I can make it

mediocre and just coast.’ He chooses to make every day great.



Being Future Strong: The Precious Few Things

You’re the CEO of your life. You’ve got to make decisions that

are best for you, best for your family. And you’ve got to put

the time and energy into what matters to you.



That is part of your personal brand. When people see you, when

you walk into the room, how do you want to be perceived?

What value do you create, and want to be known for?

Branding — good or bad — is contagious. So you want to be

sure that your personal brand reflects who you are and

where you’re trying to go.



Also: You always have to your teammates’ backs. If we do

something great, they did it. If we mess up, the first person

who has to take accountability is me. I’ve gotten that from my

playing days — if you can build a strong team, if they know

you have their back… man, they will run through walls for you.



Barnett Strongisms

• Prepare yourself for tough transitions BEFORE they happen

• We die inside when we settle for the status quo

• Wake up every day accountable for your day… Choose to make it great

Yes, it STILL matters!

The most precious asset people have is their time!



99.999% of all voicemails should not exceed 30 seconds in length.

Under 20 seconds is preferable. The key is in knowing how to use that time.

Those who do know how, get their messages heard, returned, and acted upon.

Those who don’t… D E L E T E! That’s why this is still so important.







Hardly anyone answers their phone anymore. Always assume that you will automatically go into voicemail.

If you begin with that assumption, three things have already happened:

• You will be thinking about your message before the b-e-e-p

• You are ahead of more than half of all message-leavers, who scramble at

the b-e-e-p, searching for the right words

• If someone does pick up, you’ll sound amazingly focused and articulate







Remember three words:

• Know

• Feel

• Do





“Hello, Joe. Here’s the one thing I want you to know.”

Maybe not phrased that way…But because nobody has time to listen for more than one — maybe two — points in a voicemail. So know that one point you

want them to know before you dial.







Your tone of voice often

impacts when, or if, your call gets returned.

Depending on circumstances, three tones-of-voice create the fastest replies:

• High energy [ + ]

Messages that ooooze endorphins and adrenaline

• Happiness [ + ]

Tip from acting coaches: Smile when leaving a message.

The tone of your voice will change!

• Frustration or feigned helplessness [ – ]

If you want immediate corrective action or you’re going for the sympathy vote, (“Hellllllllp!”), a tone of concern works wonders.

(If frustrated, be firm but polite. Never angry.)







“Joe, here’s what I need

you to do.” Short. Clear. Two to three sentences, maximum.







The best close is almost

always heartfelt appreciation.

“Thank you”… “You’re da best”… “Love ya”… “I really appreciate you doing this”…



Time commitment for Steps 1 through 3:

Maximum: 30 seconds

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