In 2004 I wrote, The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary. The 20th Anniversary Edition released June 1. 2004 I wrote, The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary. The 20th Anniversary Edition released June 1.

The book is about real life (then) postal carrier, Fred Shea, who was a shining example of turning the ordinary in the extraordinary and the four principles I outlined in the book.

Many have read it and thought of it as a book about customer service, and it large part it is. But while The Fred Factor is always about service, Fred isn’t always in the customer service department.

While Fred was provided extraordinary service to the people on his postal route, other “Freds” who practice the same philosophy aren’t always in the customer service department.



And that is a challenge.

No matter how good the service rep may be, a technician at a job site can undo his or her best efforts. No matter how committed a bank teller may be, bad leadership can demoralize that individual or short-circuit best efforts by implementing bad policies.

Being a Fred isn’t about the job you hold but how you do the job. Freds can be in any department, and in the best organizations they are in every department.

Anyone can be a Fred, if they choose, and I believe everyone should aspire to be a Fred. It is important for their own success, and for the success of their organizations.

Scholastic Inc. has been in business for nearly 100 years. With $2 billion in revenue and more than 9,000 employees in 16 countries, one of their missions is to help keep books alive. Scholastic is clear about their commitment to a child’s best educational interests.

That mission informs and inspires employees throughout the organization.

Then President and CEO, the late Richard Robinson, visited a warehouse. He asked a forklift driver at a distribution center, “What is your job?” He didn’t mention his forklift or distribution. He said, “My job is to help children love to read.”

Great leaders and organizations know that forklifts and distribution centers are means to a greater end if you have the right mission.

Anyone can be a Fred. And the more people in more departments in your organization who are, the more extraordinary your organization will be.

Mark Sanborn is an award winning speaker, leadership strategist and Leadership Expert in Residence at High Point University, the Premier Life Skills University. He also advises executives and professional speakers on how to speak more powerfully. For more information about his work, visit www.marksanborn.com. 

Author: Mark Sanborn

Mark is recognized globally as an expert on leadership, customer service and organizational performance.

A member of the National Speakers Association Speaker Hall of Fame, he is the author of 8 books including the international bestseller, The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary
Into the Extraordinary.

Mark teaches his clients to BE EXTRAORDINARY.

The U.S. and China: The Struggle for World Leadership

My book, The Fred Factor, talks about how to turn ordinary into extraordinary by using the real life example of Fred Shea, my postal carrier when I first moved to Denver. To read the first chapter, The First Fred I Ever Met, go here.

What follows is a summary of what “Freds” do in their work and in their lives. I hope it stimulates your thinking about what you can do to turn ordinary into extraordinary.

1. Freds go beyond what is expected, doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way.2. Freds love their work.3. Freds care about the people they work with and for.4. Freds go the extra mile in providing service.5. Freds have a signature difference they strive to make each day.
6. Freds work with passion.7. Freds are creative problem solvers.
8. Freds build and maintain positive relationships.
9. Freds stick to their values. 
10. Freds are team players. 
11. Freds pass on their values to the next generation. 
12. Freds make significant contributions on their community.13. Freds offer their best.

Mark Sanborn is an award winning speaker, leadership strategist and Leadership Expert in Residence at High Point University, the Premier Life Skills University. He also advises executives and professional speakers on how to speak more powerfully. For more information about his work, visit www.marksanborn.com. 

Author: Mark Sanborn

Mark is recognized globally as an expert on leadership, customer service and organizational performance.

A member of the National Speakers Association Speaker Hall of Fame, he is the author of 8 books including the international bestseller, The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary
Into the Extraordinary.

Mark teaches his clients to BE EXTRAORDINARY.

In today’s world of work, being inclusive as a leader isn’t optional. In many companies I work with and consult, inclusion is used as a mere buzzword that doesn’t translate into any tangible behavioral change. The reason I feel leaders who preach inclusion and not practice it is because it is hard. Paying lip service to inclusion may give you some brownie points, but practicing inclusion leads to remarkable results. 

Practicing Inclusion is Transformative

When Satya Nadella took charge as Microsoft’s CEO, the company was struggling with fairly rigid culture and stagnation. Nadella emphasized the importance of being a learning leader, adopting a growth mindset and working collaboratively with empathy. He worked hard at breaking down silos, encouraged employees to learn from each other, be customer centric, embrace diverse perspectives and work as one team to accomplish common goals. He conducted regular town-halls, institutionalized mentoring programs, conducted open forums to elicit ideas and concerns.

“Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth.”– Jesse Jackson

The culture shifted over the years, so did the outcomes. Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform was accomplished through a rigorous cross-functional collaboration. Under Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft transformed into a dynamic and forward-thinking organization resulting in growth and innovation.

Nadella’s story underlines what research from McKinsey & Co. suggests: That companies with diverse leadership are 33% more likely to achieve above-average profitability. 

The Boldly Inclusive Leader

In this context, I read Minette Norman’s book “The Boldly Inclusive Leader” with great interest. The book is a compelling guide for leaders to foster a more inclusive workplace. Norman provides actionable strategies and insights to build an inclusive culture through foundations of continuous learning, active listening, authentic communication, and creating psychologically safe environment for people to thrive. For me, Norman’s insights on being self-aware and being willing to embrace discomfort stood out. She reframes difficult experiences as “learning opportunities” and encourages leaders to reflect on their biases when dealing with people.

A Sketchnote on What Boldy Inclusive Leaders Do

The book is a must read if you are looking for a powerful and actionable guide to being more inclusive. Here is a sketchnote synthesizing some of the key ideas that truly stood out for me:

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

In today’s world of work, being inclusive as a leader isn’t optional. In many companies I work with and consult, inclusion is used as a mere buzzword that doesn’t translate into any tangible behavioral change. The reason I feel leaders who preach inclusion and not practice it is because it is hard. Paying lip service to inclusion may give you some brownie points, but practicing inclusion leads to remarkable results. 

Practicing Inclusion is Transformative

When Satya Nadella took charge as Microsoft’s CEO, the company was struggling with fairly rigid culture and stagnation. Nadella emphasized the importance of being a learning leader, adopting a growth mindset and working collaboratively with empathy. He worked hard at breaking down silos, encouraged employees to learn from each other, be customer centric, embrace diverse perspectives and work as one team to accomplish common goals. He conducted regular town-halls, institutionalized mentoring programs, conducted open forums to elicit ideas and concerns.

“Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth.”– Jesse Jackson

The culture shifted over the years, so did the outcomes. Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform was accomplished through a rigorous cross-functional collaboration. Under Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft transformed into a dynamic and forward-thinking organization resulting in growth and innovation.

Nadella’s story underlines what research from McKinsey & Co. suggests: That companies with diverse leadership are 33% more likely to achieve above-average profitability. 

The Boldly Inclusive Leader

In this context, I read Minette Norman’s book “The Boldly Inclusive Leader” with great interest. The book is a compelling guide for leaders to foster a more inclusive workplace. Norman provides actionable strategies and insights to build an inclusive culture through foundations of continuous learning, active listening, authentic communication, and creating psychologically safe environment for people to thrive. For me, Norman’s insights on being self-aware and being willing to embrace discomfort stood out. She reframes difficult experiences as “learning opportunities” and encourages leaders to reflect on their biases when dealing with people.

A Sketchnote on What Boldy Inclusive Leaders Do

The book is a must read if you are looking for a powerful and actionable guide to being more inclusive. Here is a sketchnote synthesizing some of the key ideas that truly stood out for me:

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

We often take decisions based on what matters the most to us “at that point in time”. Revenues going down? Take up that dreaded project which you wouldn’t take otherwise. A friend wants you to speak for free at an event? Say yes, because he is a friend afterall. A product being offered at really low cost? Buy it, it’s a great bargain. 

You only realize later that the project you took up ate all your team’s time and resources to the point of making losses and losing reputation. That free speaking gig meant hours spent preparing for it, away from your family and friends. That product that looked like great bargain ended up being a crappy product that felt like a waste.

Every “Yes” contains a “No” to something else, and vice versa. (Courtesy: Nicholas Bate) 

This happens all the time, in personal as well as business context. That’s because we take these decisions very lightly without doing critical thinking. But then, there are invisible costs that we can only feel, but cannot tangibly count. How would you measure loss of reputation because of that failed project, or lost productivity addressing something that could have been avoided completely?

Critical decisions are not binary but multifaceted. When stakes are high (personally, emotionally, and professionally), it helps to carefully consider different facets of it. This is not about discouraging quick decisions, but encouraging thoughtful decisions when it matters. I am a big fan of taking quick decisions, acting and adapting/learning our way into doing things right when stakes are low. That’s how we learn – through small experiments, reflection and putting that learning into our next step. 

In this context, I read this wonderful post from Frank Sonnenberg offering a useful checklist to consider when making decisions. He says,

When making decisions, most people view cost as an important consideration. While price is undoubtedly crucial, what about invisible costs that also come into play? For example, what are the long-term effects of your decision? Does your choice align with your beliefs and values? And of course, have you considered how your decision impacts your relationships? Simply put, hidden costs may be invisible to the naked eye, but they’re very visible to your wallet. Overlooking these factors can cost you a bundle.

Here is a #sketchnote summary of how Invisible costs can cost you a lot. 

Related Reading at QAspire.com

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 88+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.

Ten Pivotal Tips to Boost Your Leadership Skills

Knowledge in organizations flows “across” people and teams. Real knowledge resides in the network of people and its interactions.

Everything that is found in documents, systems, process flows and tool kits is “explicit” knowledge that is useful to sustain the business and keep the “status quo”. That is the tip of the iceberg – visible and accessible. In fact, most of the content that AI repurposes from online resources is explicit knowledge. 

The hidden treasure of organizational knowledge is tacit knowledge that is deeply rooted in people, their experiences, skills, insights and judgements. Tacit knowledge doesn’t come to the fore easily because it resides in the minds of people. How to react to a specific situation? How to connect seemingly discrete dots? That’s all tacit and invaluable at the same time. Unlocking tacit knowledge is how organizations break past their internal barriers to improve and innovate.

Another key thing about tacit knowledge is that it is ever evolving. We learn through experience to gain tacit knowledge and when we document/codify it, it turns into explicit knowledge which spreads through sharing. The key is to constantly build connections between our understanding from different disciplines and gain new tacit knowledge (nuanced understanding) through experience. 

The Key to Unlock Tacit Knowledge

It starts with leadership commitment. When leaders across the board focus on cultivating the mindset of learning together, tacit knowledge precipitates through conversations. During my 6 years tenure as an organizational leader, I had reasonable success in building a culture of constant learning starting from one to one interactions, functional practices to cross-team learning forums. It was a long and arduous journey that led our R&D teams to build and support a truly world-class product that ranked amongst top 3 in the Gartner Magic Quadrant consistently over the years. Developing people and seeing them grow was even more gratifying.

In my experience, building such a culture requires leaders to:

Actively focus on building trust and collaboration
Build collective learning rituals within and across teams enabling people to look back (retrospection) and look forward (ideation)
Ask open ended questions that elicits deeper understanding and organic exchange of tacit knowledge
Build a conducive and psychologically safe culture where people feel comfortable opening up with their ideas and insights, and learn from successes as well as failures.
Build reflective and retrospective practices to enable continuous learning in the flow of work
Invest in systems like enterprize social network where conversations can happen
Create internal coaching and mentoring programs to guide (and be guided) through personalized interactions
Create communities of practice for knowledge sharing and mutual learning
Codify and plough back lessons into organizational knowledge databases, processes and toolkits. 
Truly invest in learning and development initiatives exposing people to newer ideas from within and outside the organization enabling people to blend their experiences with needs of the new context.
Position constant learning as a journey rather than “training as an event”

A facilitative mindset is about understanding that the real knowledge of organisation is in collective intelligence. A facilitative leader creates conversational spaces, remains curious about what people learn and bring that knowledge into improvements and innovative ideas. Such a mindset enables people to exercise their choice of sharing and contributing.

Being facilitative is about stepping aside, even if a few hours each week, from operational stuff and focus on conversations leading to learning. Building such a culture ultimately boils down to “commitment”. In this context, Microsoft’s story of embracing growth mindset, inclusivity and building a “learn-it-all” culture is very inspiring. 

Embracing a facilitative mindset of leadership unlocks the untapped potential of tacit knowledge while empowering people/teams to thrive in an ever-evolving world. 

As Nick Milton says in his wonderful post, “You cannot solve knowledge problems with information tools alone.” (Hat Tip to Helen Bevan for sharing Nick’s post)

Updated: Visual Leadership Pack HD Sketchnotes

If you liked the sketchnote summary above, check out the Visual Leadership Pack of HD Sketchnotes – a compilation of high-resolution sketchnotes with 90+ powerful (and timeless) ideas to elevate your leadership and learning game.