I often have people come up to me after I’ve given a speech and say, "Boy, would I love to be able to do that for a living—go around the country and give speeches."  When I ask them why they don’t, they say, "Oh, I could never do that." Did you know that the fear of public speaking is higher on the list of fears than the fear of death? This probably doesn’t surprise any of you who have dreaded having to make a presentation. Some individuals have such an aversion to public speaking that they may even decline career opportunities based on the chance that they will have to speak in front of others. While this may seem startling or sad, the truth of the matter is that public speaking is a learnable skill. People who feel inadequate about themselves in front of a group can learn to become good speakers. I firmly believe there are three things that can impact your performance in public speaking:  body language, routine, and your belief system. Body Language. If you want to become a good public speaker, closely watch other public speakers to see what they do and how they carry their body.  For example, I have observed that good public speakers walk with their shoulders back and their heads high and use a lot of hand and arm gestures. If you are nervous, hold your head up and your shoulders back and say, "I am feeling good. I am feeling really good."  Silly as it may seem, this actually works.  The mind does not know the difference between what it perceives and what you tell it to perceive. Think of a time when you were feeling very confident and productive in some area in your life.  How did you act?  How did you walk?  How did you talk?  What did you do?  It’s pretty hard to feel inadequate if you walk and act like you know what you’re doing. Routine. What is the routine people use when they make a presentation?  When you see a good bowler, for example, they always start at the same mark, take the same number of steps, and release the ball in the same way.  By getting a routine established, you signal your brain that all is well. If the material I’m speaking on is new to me, I try to practice it several times with others—friends, employees, family—prior to delivering it to a group I don’t know. I get feedback each time, and I try to think of questions audience members are likely to have while I’m speaking.  I also use notes until the information becomes second nature to me.  Before I give a speech, I usually engage in deep breathing and a quick review of what I plan to say, which I may do with someone I’m with just prior to my presentation.  When I get on my feet, the first thing I do is tell some funny story that gets the audience relaxed and gets me relaxed. Then I can get into my speech. Now a lot of people tell me, "But I’m not good at telling jokes."  Well, this too can be learned. Experiment with what works best for you in breaking the ice with a group. Belief System. Finally, what are the thoughts and beliefs that you have about public speaking?  The late, great speech coach Dorothy Sarnoff used to suggest repeating these words to yourself before giving a speech: "I’m glad I’m here.  I’m glad you’re here.  I know what I know and I care about you."  Repeating these thoughts can change your belief system so that you actually become glad you are there and glad the audience is there. You know what you know and you can then stop worrying about not being good enough or perhaps not being able to answer a question that is asked.  When you focus on caring about the people in the audience, it becomes difficult to be fearful of the same group or of the situation. Once you start saying this over and over, it will have a tremendous impact on your level of confidence. After applying these principles, you need to practice, practice, practice to hone your skill.  Seek opportunities to make presentations or join a Toastmasters International club in your area.  It will then only be a matter of time before you can perform as a professional and experience the joy and excitement of sharing your thoughts and helping others in the process. Good luck!

Some folks wonder whether or not it’s true that a good leader can manage anyone—even someone doing a job the leader doesn’t understand or someone with skills the leader doesn’t have. And, if it’s true, how is it possible? In fact, leaders are often responsible for individuals who perform tasks the leader may never have personally done. This is why you sometimes hear of managers and executives who successfully change jobs from one industry to a completely different one. How is this possible, you ask? First, leaders often coordinate activities of highly skilled, mature employees who are often capable of  working with little supervision.  Second, leadership is primarily a people activity. If a person has good people skills such as the ability to motivate, communicate, and listen, then that person has the most important attributes of being a good leader, regardless of the type of work being done by direct reports. If an employee is working in a specialized job with which his or her manager has had little or no experience, that manager can still help that employee achieve top results by listening to find out what that person needs to successfully do the job and working to meet those needs. In addition, a good leader can be a sounding board for ideas and can help talk through problems. A leader can also represent the importance and value of the person’s work to others within the organization. In short, an effective leader must be resourceful.  Remember, a common definition of management is "getting things done through others." This description of a good leader differs from the popular image held by many people.  The effective leader or manager is not an all-knowing, multi-talented "super worker."  I’m glad to report that this stereotype is on its way out. We don’t need leaders who are good at everything—we need leaders who are very good at a few things, such as helping workers get what they need to complete their jobs or being adept at coordination throughout an organization. Peter Drucker, one of the top leadership gurus, claimed that the best model for tomorrow’s organization is that of a symphony orchestra.  In such an organization, a single person—the conductor—coordinates the performance of hundreds of specialists. The conductor communicates directly with each musician and can tell the musician what is needed to achieve the right combination of sounds without knowing how to play the tuba or the drums. Effective leaders must know and be able to communicate what is expected.  They provide the big picture.  They don’t need to know exactly what must be done by specific individuals or departments to achieve those expectations.  Effective leaders set goals and then translate those goals for others using clear communication. This ensures that the number of management levels between the CEO and those doing the job will not need to increase.  Many organizations today have fewer layers of management and wider spans of control for leaders than typical hierarchies in the past.  Increasingly, organizations will become loose-knit clusters of specialists who are served by their leaders. Remember: Leaders are more likely to be effective at managing anyone if they have or develop the skills that are related to people and not specifically to a job or profession.

When I say "us" I mean the United Sates. We have all been hearing about the debt ceiling discussions for the last few weeks. $2.4 trillion in savings is a lot of dollars. I was in the area of the US Capital a few weeks ago and saw many wasteful spending examples. When you step back and you think about it, what has been driving savings for the last few decades? Technology and Innovation. So if a technology can save us money, shouldn’t we be using it everywhere? At Discovery Machine, our artificial intelligence applications are set to save the government a lot of money. The millions we can save will help to achieve that $2.4 trillion goal. I know other applications of different technologies that can also help reduce the debt. Do you know any? Discovery Machine is an example of how the government spends some research dollars in the right way.  We were helped by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. The government invests money in a small business to help mature a technology to help them achieve a goal.  That advanced technology can then be transitioned to help many government areas and commercial businesses. One example of how we are doing this, is through the use of our methodology to capture the best practices for a critical area of the US Army.  We then use our very advanced AI technology to help them train new soldiers in a much less expensive way and save money.  Yes, saving money is a good thing.  When you use a technology that saves money in a lot of places, you get it. You save a lot of money. So one way we are going to close this gap is to use technology that saves us money. Innovative thinking that creates new technology has been the savings path for years.  The recent advances in AI have clearly shown the uses it can provide in driving savings.  Yes 2.4 trillion is a big goal, but it can be achieved by applying technologies to save costs.

Noted author Jules Verne wrote "Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real" in his classic novel Around the World in Eighty Days.  This statement resonates true today and can be correlated with the United States desires. "Anything one man can imagine…" The first half of the statement "Anything one man can imagine" implies to me a challenge.  The United States acts as "one man" in this quote because it often issues challenges in regards to cost-cutting measures, innovation, and ways to improve the country.  The government imagines what will make the country better and hopes others will rise to the challenge of meeting those dreams. "…other men can make real." The second half of the quote is more of a call to action.  In my opinion, small businesses are synonymous to the "other men" because they readily embrace challenges laid out by the government to reach seemingly impossible goals and actually attain them in real solutions. Discovery Machine is an example of this process in action.  We are a small business which continually strives to meet the challenges set forth by the United States government.  The government issued a challenge to reduce military spending while enhancing training readiness levels for military personnel.  Discovery Machine answered the challenge by documenting the expertise of the world’s top military strategists and putting it into the hands of instructors.  Now instructors can leverage that expertise and deploy it as artificial intelligence to control simulated entities in training. Discovery Machine’s approach reduces costs because it allows instructors to create intelligent behaviors for use in training without the need of a computer programmer.  Resulting behaviors are automated so it reduces the need for human operators, again reducing costs.  All Discovery Machine behaviors are validated by experts to ensure their accuracy which leads to enhanced training results.  Discovery Machine’s approach enhances training results because students are training with artificial intelligent behaviors validated by subject matter experts that are up to date with the latest tactics. Innovation is the answer to the United States economic woes.  If more companies would rise to the government’s challenges as Discovery Machine has, we can succeed and innovate our way into the future.

The first thing you need to decide when you lose a key manager is whether you need to hire a "winner" or a "potential winner" to replace this person.  Winners are individuals who have demonstrated that they can do the exact job you need done.  They are hard to find and they cost money, but they are relatively easy to supervise.  All they need to know is what the goals are. If the last manager was a winner and you worked well with that person, you might need to search extensively to get the same type of individual.  If you can’t afford or don’t think you can find—or take the time to find—a winner, your next alternative is to hire a potential winner.  Potential winners are individuals who have promise, but have not demonstrated the ability do the specific job you need done.  They are less expensive to hire but they require time and training to develop the skills for the job at hand.  Do you have that kind of time?  Can you afford to train someone to take the last person’s place? As you interview an individual, how do you tell whether you have a winner?  Let me suggest a process you might use.  When you interview job applicants, attempt to find out as much about them and their background as you can.  As they explain their past, probe with appropriate questions along the way to learn how they have arrived at their current position in life. After you get a sense of the person’s personal and professional background, share with him or her the key responsibility areas in the position you have open.  Be as detailed as you can regarding your concerns and expectations. This process will give you an initial sense of the quality of person you are dealing with. After this phase of interviewing, you will be able to narrow down the field to the best potential candidates for the job. During the second interview, give the person a pad and pencil and have him or her prepare a strategy to follow if he or she were to get the job—that is, what would be done first, followed by what would be done within the next three, six and nine months.  Give the applicant an hour to complete this task. Tell him or her that you will want to read the prepared statement as well as listen to an oral presentation.  This will give you not only a sense of the person’s ability to think and plan, but it will also indicate his or her level of initiative, organization, and creativity as well as ability to communicate and present ideas verbally and in writing. After you have heard the presentation, talk about it. Ask what kind of supervision he or she would need from you in each of the key responsibility areas of the position: Close supervision (known in Situational Leadership® II as a Directing leadership style); both direction and support along with participation in decision making (a Coaching leadership style); support, encouragement and listening (a Supporting leadership style); or could you leave the person alone with minimal supervision (a Delegating leadership style)? Suggest that the amount of direction the person will need will depend on his or her level of competence in the areas of responsibility, and that the amount of support and involvement you will provide will depend on his or her level of confidence in performing each task or goal.  For example, for you to effectively use a Delegating leadership style, the person would need to be highly competent and confident at the task at hand.  Whereas, if the person is an "enthusiastic beginner" (SLII® language), more direction will be needed.  Suggest that the person look at each of the responsibilities separately and be ready to talk with you in terms of what kind of supervision might be necessary. While your new candidate is working on analyzing his or her own development level and the appropriate leadership style needed to be effectively supervised in each responsibility area, you would do the same in relation to what you have learned about the person. After you each have analyzed appropriate supervisory approaches on various tasks or goals, you would come together and talk about the kind of supervision that person would probably need. What is fascinating about this exercise is that you are essentially contracting for a leadership style with the person before he or she has been hired.  This way, you can find out whether this person is a winner who can be generally supervised or a potential winner who will require a greater degree of direct supervision and control. Hiring a replacement for a key position is not a simple task—it’s something that must be done with great care.  The ideas I’ve presented here have helped me many times to make the best hiring decision—I hope they help you, too!

Best practices are activities that are tailored to a specific situation and carried out by experts to achieve goals. Powerpoints and training videos can describe general processes, but nearly always fail in capturing decision  making and problem solving techniques. Decisions are tied directly to specific situations that people encounter and those situations quickly diverge from documented steps. To date, lessons learned and best practice efforts are broad and shallow. They touch the surface of deep problems but do not address the core issues. They fail to decompose knowledge to a granularity that is useful and thus fail to capture the important aspects of key knowledge assets. Knowledge is cognitive decision making based on the current situational factors and the combination of conditions the expert considers. A true best practice represents an actionable response for any reasonable scenario. Consider the following ways in which best practices are typically documented:  PowerPoint, videos and documents.  How often do you find yourself referencing a standard best practice and find an exact match to the situation you find yourself in?  How often do you have access to the person who authored the best practice to ask how the best practice can be applied to your specific situation?  The Discovery Machine methodology results in a job aid that helps to match your current situation to the decisions and actions that need to be made in real time. Traditionally, the lack of true best practice capture prevents organizations from both identifying many useful standard processes and from improving upon them overtime. Discovery Machine’s approach applies a methodology and patented technology to turn each best practice into a fully functioning application.  Each best practice acts as a targeted expert system for solving some problem.  In addition, each best practice can be adapted over time with automatic incorporation of new, situation specific lessons.

On August 29th the Williamsport Manufacturer and Business Association hosted U.S. Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) at a roundtable discussion with area business and community leaders. Discovery Machine was delighted to attend. Senator Toomey, who was recently selected to serve on the elite "Super Committee" created by the Budget  Control Act, discussed both jobs and the state of the economy with local leaders. Since joining the Senate in January, Toomey has distinguished himself as a leader on economic, financial services and budgetary issues, striving to restore fiscal discipline to Washington and economic opportunity for all Americans. A ranking member of the Commerce Committee’s Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance Subcommittee, the Senator previously represented Pennsylvania’s Fifteenth District for three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Discovery Machine took this unique opportunity to seek the Senators’ support of the reauthorization of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. These programs have a proven track record of innovation and quality, long term job creation, and are an important part of  the Discovery Machine business model. Our follow-up letter to Senator Toomey is  listed, below. "Senator Toomey, Thank you for coming to Williamsport today and speaking with the group at the Manufacturer and Business Association.  James McAssey, from my company Discovery Machine, brought up the request to support the reauthorization of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. As a women owned small business, we have been able to use these programs to mature our Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions to allow the DoD to save hundreds of millions in training efforts. Our technology can also allow you to capture the knowledge of the retiring baby boomers, so the development of that lost expertise doesn’t have to inefficiently take years to regenerate.  You mentioned the 10,000 Baby Boomers that become eligible to receive government entitlements every day.  I believe an even bigger economic impact is the loss of their experience if it is not effectively captured in an actionable way, which is what our technology does. (I have attached a strategy paper on this issue) As a Pennsylvania Senator, you might know that Pennsylvania is the origin of this wave.  Kathleen Casey-Kirschling was born in Philadelphia on January 1st of 1946 at 12:00:01 AM. She marked the beginning of a generation born between 1946 and 1964 and is fully eligible this year for social security. She is credited for being the first Baby Boomer. Discovery Machine would have not have been able to develop the AI technology we have and hire the highly skilled workers in Pennsylvania without the SBIR and STTR programs.  I urge you to support Senate bill S.1082 and provide Super Committee support to these innovative programs (HR.1425) that can provide the mechanisms for much of the savings that need to be developed.  Big savings can come from a new and more innovative way for doing something.  We need to spend less but also spend smarter on technologies that drive savings. We would appreciate your support to these programs.  If you want to hear more on how the Discovery Machine AI technology saves money and helps the knowledge drain the baby boomer wave creates, I would be glad to meet with you.  Thank you. Anna Griffith CEO and Founder Discovery Machine, Inc."

Do you ever go home feeling that you’ve spent the whole day doing jobs on other people’s "to do" lists instead of your own?  Do you feel that you’re doing more but accomplishing less?  Your life may seem out of control, but it doesn’t have to be if you learn the art of monkey management. Several years ago I had a chance to work with the leading expert of monkey management, Bill Oncken, Jr., who authored, with Don Wass, one of the all-time best-selling articles published by the Harvard Business Review entitled Managing Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?  Bill and I joined forces with Hal Burrows to write The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey (Morrow, 1989).  It was a fabulous experience and I learned quite a few things about managing monkeys that still hold true today. For those of you who are still scratching your head, allow me to explain. A "monkey" is the next move after two individuals meet, as illustrated here:  Say you meet an employee in the hallway.  He says, "Can I see you for a minute?  We have a problem."  He explains; you listen; time flies. Twenty minutes later you know enough about the problem to realize you’ll have to be involved, but you don’t know enough to make a decision.  So you say, "This is very important, but I don’t have time to discuss it now.  Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you." The detached observer understands what just happened, but when you’re in the middle, it’s harder to see the big picture.  Before you met your staff member in that hall, the monkey was on his back.  While you were talking, the matter was under joint consideration, so the monkey had one leg on each of your backs.  But when you said, "Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you," the monkey moved squarely onto your back. The problem may have been part of your employee’s job, and he may have been perfectly capable of proposing a solution.  But when you allowed that monkey to leap onto your back, you volunteered to do two things that this person was generally expected to do as part of his job:  (1) You accepted the responsibility for the problem, and (2) you promised him a progress report.  Just be sure it’s clear who’s in charge now, your staff member will stop in on you several times the next few days to say, "Hi!  How’s it coming?"  If you haven’t resolved the matter to your employee’s satisfaction, he may begin to pressure you to do what is actually his job. To avoid this travesty, monkey management is necessary. Managers must be careful not to pick up other people’s monkeys.  When they do, they broadcast the message that the employees lack the skills to care for and feed the monkeys themselves.  Managers who grab monkeys off their people’s backs often kill employee initiative, and everyone is left waiting for the boss to "make the next move." Nobody wins when you take care of other people’s monkeys.  You become a hassled manager and don’t feel very good about yourself.  And you have workers who look to satisfy their needs elsewhere, because they feel underutilized and unappreciated.  They often become dependent upon the boss.  The care and feeding of other people’s monkeys is the ultimate lose/lose deal. Bill Oncken, Jr. developed four rules of monkey management to help managers give back monkeys without being accused of buck-passing or abdication.  They are: 1.  Describe the monkey. The dialogue between a manager and a staff member must not end until appropriate next moves have been identified and clearly specified. 2.  Assign the monkey. All monkeys shall be owned and handled at the lowest organizational level possible. 3.  Insure the monkey. Every monkey leaving you on the back of one of your people must be covered by one of two insurance policies:  (1) recommend, then act, or (2) act, then advise. 4.  Check on the monkey. Proper follow-up means healthier monkeys.  Every monkey should have a checkup appointment. If you follow Oncken’s rules, you’ll stop viewing your people as the major source of your problems and will soon start seeing them as major solutions, because each of their backs can be a depository for several monkeys. Try monkey management—it works!

The United States government needs to save a lot of money. Some say it is not the $1.2 Trillion the congressional Super Committee talks about,  Alice Rivlin, the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution says it is a more like $4 to $5 Trillion over 10 years. That is an amazing amount. A trillion is equal to a thousand billions (1,000 x 1,000,000,000) or just  a million millions (1,000,000 x 1,000,000).  Sounds like a lot?  In 2009, there were about 130 million houses in the US. 5 Trillion houses would be a little more than 38 houses for every house in the US today. Image more 37 houses on your yard? I got a chance to ask a question to Pennsylvania Senator Toomey, who is on the congressional Super Committee, last month.  Since we are an artificial intelligence company that is posed to save the Navy 10s or maybe 100 million over ten years and we have benefited from the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. I asked him to support the continuation of the SBIR program. He said he did not know much about the program but would make a note to look into it. I wish I had more time to tell him about how the Discovery Machine software positioned to save the Navy millions. This same use of intelligent automated technology could save the government millions in other areas. Technology like the Discovery Machine AI capabilities is posed to help the US government achieve this very lofty goal. I believe the only way to achieve goals like this is to think outside the box, use revolutionary technologies, and reach out to small innovative companies. I hope the government continues to realize the benefits of what Discovery Machine o

It’s not uncommon after I have given a presentation for someone to say to me, "If only my manager had been here!  He (or she) really needed to hear this."  I feel it’s a bit of a cop-out to blame your work problems on others.  It’s a safe way of not taking responsibility for your own circumstances and initiative to make things better.  The fact of the matter is that, during the span of your career, it’s likely that two out of every three managers will not be very good at the job of managing.  Are you going to let that keep you from getting what you want and need in your job? If you’re going to succeed, you need to train your manager to give you what you need.  Fortunately, this is easier than it may sound—perhaps as easy as 1,2,3: 1. Give your manager what he/she needs to be successful. It’s going to be difficult to get your manager to make special efforts to help you if you don’t first show, through your actions, that you are worthy of such special effort.  Be responsive both in promptly doing what is asked of you, as well as volunteering to help on special projects and responsibilities.  Be proactive, try to anticipate your manager’s needs, and help to meet those needs.  Take a moment on occasion to ask what else you could be doing to help out.  Your attitude and behavior on this first step paves the way for the next step. 2. Tell your manager what you need from him/her to be successful in your job. After you have confirmed with your manager what is expected of you in your job, state what you’ll need from him/her for you to succeed.  This is where your knowledge of One Minute Management can be used to get the results you want.  Identify simple, clear, and specific One Minute Goals for each item you will be counting on for your manager to deliver, and then set realistic time frames for when those items can be done. 3. Follow up on 1 and 2. By doing what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it, you will build a reputation for being dependable and responsible.  By tactfully following up on items your manager agreed to do, you will build the expectation of reciprocity. When your manager follows through on a commitment to you, use One Minute Praising to positively reinforce the behavior.  I am constantly amazed at how many employees feel that managers don’t need praisings!  After all—so goes the logic—that’s why managers are paid more.  It’s as if by making more money managers graduate to being appreciated less!  Let me let you in on a secret:  People are never too old or too high up in an organization to not want praisings—it’s human nature. Everyone likes others to notice things they worked hard to achieve. Give your manager a praising today and see for yourself!  And remember to praise progress—don’t wait until something is done perfectly before you say something. If your manager does not follow through on a commitment to do something for you, you need some subtle form of a One Minute Reprimand.  Either reestablish the goal while checking on what you could do to move things along, or redirect your manager’s efforts toward a more feasible and realistic task.  Of course, you won’t have the position power to reprimand your manager, but the more you have built your personal power with him/her, the more likely a subtle reminder will work to get things back on track. So don’t lament that your manager hasn’t created the perfect working environment for you—do something about it!  Take control of your work life, and learn how to get what you want from your manager in order to make things happen for you and the company.  People who learn the skills of managing up will soon be the ones who move up in today’s organizations.