A great example of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?’s painted picture in action was when one of our amazing marketing managers Andrea Baxter said, “Can you imagine our company name on Starbucks cups?” I thought she was kinda nuts for suggesting such an idea, but I didn’t say anything.  When she said, “Don’t worry about how it’ll happen. As long as you can see it three years from now, I’ll make it happen,” I knew she was nuts, but I loved her passion and conviction.

A few months later Andrea told us we’d soon be on ten million Starbucks cups across North America–for free–with a quote and the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? name on it.  Nice!

Here’s the cool part:  Starbucks told Andrea that they’d put a quote from our founder on the cups but not the company name. In response, Andrea told Starbucks, “No, you have to put the company name on the cup!  That’s part of our vision.  It says so on our wall!” She sent Starbucks a picture of the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? ‘Can You Imagine?’ wall and convinced them to include the company name. Her belief in the idea helped the company achieve our goal of getting 1-800-GOT-JUNK? on ten million cups of Starbucks coffee.

Brian’s quote on Starbucks cups:  “It’s difficult for people to get rid of junk. They get attached to things and let them define who they are. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that you are what you can’t let go of.”  Brian Scudamore, CEO, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?

Make your painted picture stick.  An unwavering vision that comes to pass will be celebrated 100 times more than something you’re willing to compromise on.

Read the info on Huddle below – then watch the video

‘Huddle’ is a Verne Harnish concept based on his Rockefeller Habits program. When we ran it at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, it was a seven minute, all company, stand-up meeting that started at 10:55 and ended at 11:02.

Implementing this will change your company.  Period.

Everyone I’ve taught this too has benefitted greatly from better internal communication and company morale.  It unites the team like nothing else can.

Here’s the format for a Huddle:

Good news. The first couple of minutes, anyone can share good news or praise other business areas, work with customers, fellow employees and so forth.

Numbers. Review and post the key metrics from your sales funnel so everyone has a window onto the key numbers for the business.  If Rockefeller looked at the numbers daily from his oil fields using the world’s first Telex, why wouldn’t we share the key numbers with our employees?

What Does it All Mean? Do a daily forecast on the monthly (and yearly) revenue versus budget.  It was awesome to show the team how we were doing on a daily basis versus waiting until the end of the month to add it all up.

Department Update. This is a glimpse into each business area.  It’s also a way to systematically ensure that business areas were always focused on their quarterly TOP 3 projects.

Missing Systems/Frustrations.  Anyone should share these and do it in a no-blame environment.  After each frustration, have someone take ownership of the problem to make sure it gets fixed.  No debate or discussion should happen at Huddle—issues are raised and someone offers to resolve them.

Cheer. This will be dorky at first, but everyone will grow to love it.  It works well at sporting events.  Try it and you’ll see your staff leave the Huddle pumped and on a positive note.

Lastly, Huddle is a great daily meeting to keep your team focused on your Quarterly Theme too.

Have you been doing huddle at your company yet ?  Comments ?

I dare you to try it.  Hell, I dare you not to.

This slide is at Google’s Zurich office.

Nothing kills creativity like boring photos on the walls or using super-traditional board and conference rooms when you’re running a new and exciting business venture. Boring rooms, mean boring employees, mean customers go elsewhere.

Go a little crazy and use the physical space as a blank canvas to elevate the mood of the team. For example, at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, one of our boardrooms was called the Blue Sky Room.  We had a huge wall with a blue sky and clouds.

ReThink Marketing in Vancouver has a Lego room, a drum set, globes hanging from the ceiling, a ping pong ball board room table and Astro turf for carpet.

Don’t be confined to some old school vision of the workplace. You’re not an old school company.  Plus you’ll get Free Publicity from building an awesome company culture. This is one piece of good and effective advice that I always tell CEOs that I coach and mentor.

At 1-800-GOT-JUNK? we did a great job of making the Painted Picture come to life.  Brian Scudamore was the visionary who would write down what he saw ‘in the future.’  He handed me the first Painted Picture in October 2000, after spending some time sitting on his parent’s dock on Bowen Island. It was a vision of what the company would look and feel like by the end of 2003.  He didn’t know how he’d build what he saw that day from the dock, but he wrote down everything he could conjure up. He knew if he could see it, we could build it.

In later versions of Brian’s Painted Pictures, he began asking employees and Franchise Partners what they saw in the future.  Some of their ideas got baked into the Painted Pictures created for the years 2006 and 2009.  Many of their visions were placed in large vinyl letters on what we called our ‘Can You Imagine?’ wall.  We included brief descriptions of our ideas for the future, too. For example, at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, we called our office the ‘Junktion,’ and envisioned it becoming a famous tourist destination,  an idea generated by Katie Dunsworth.  Then there was Lindsay Peroff’s vision of seeing our company on Dr. Phil, which she later made a reality.

What we proved was that the visualization techniques taught by an ex-Olympic and sports psychologist were as applicable to business as they were to high performance athletes. We didn’t worry about how, and instead, focused on the end result, the vision of success.  By building on that concept, and involving employees, we enlisted people to help us create that vision, and make it a reality.  Then we figured out how to reverse engineer it to make it happen. As a business coach and mentor, I help CEOs create a very goal oriented Painted Picture for their business. Scroll down here to read my Painted Picture for BackPocket COO.  Do you have yours in writing yet?