Would 75% of the people in the world writing vision and mission statements please stop.
Seriously. Just stop now. They are bad and doing more harm than good.
If you are president of a company and want to know if yours is worth a sparrow’s fart, just ask your employees. Scared to do that? Try the Mission Generator website and see if it sounds anything like yours.
It shouldn’t.
As this year closes out I have a very simple wish for each of you. I pray that you may have hope. Great hopes. The kind that you can’t tell anyone for fear of sounding like some kind of nut job.
I am not praying that you get what you want. Looking back there are a lot of things that I wanted that I am glad I never received. I want you to have more.
I want you to believe in something; to have hope that something that seems so far fetched right now is possible.
I wish for you a drive to do the unexplainable in the name of the impossible.
Continue Reading…
You know those days where you are in a real funk and everyone knows it but you just don’t know why? I’ve had a few of those this past month.
What makes it worse is when your friends and family all try to help you “perk up” and it just doesn’t work. It’s like spinning your car tires in the ditch. You love them for their effort but only a snarl comes out when you say thank you. Continue Reading…
My mom is an amazing woman. Actually, she’s not my mom, she’s Beth’s mom. I just refuse to add the “in-law” tag as she defies all the imagery of a typical in-law.
This week Mom reminded me of how important it is to show your homework.
Mom and her family business bank at one of the mega corporations here in Atlanta. She loves this place. She loves the people, the service, and the way they make her feel special when she walks in the door. Not your typical mega-bank.
I love the moon. There are so many amazing sights in this world but nothing stops me in my tracks like a huge, glowing circle of orange light sitting on the fall horizon.
Not only is it beautiful, it often feels so close that you could actually touch it – and we did back in 1969. We will not be able to say this about any other celestial object in our lifetime.
This neighboring orb has always fascinated me. Many times I’ve pulled over on the side of an empty road with its radiant light directly in the center of the windshield (yes I get up early). It was always the perfect, solitary moment to sit an offer a prayer of thanksgiving. Continue Reading…
I overheard a conversation between two young women the other day. One of them had asked the other, “Wow, he finally asked you. Did you say yes?” To which the other replied, “I told him that I needed more data.”
Seriously?
No. That conversation never happened. But imagine the look on the guy’s face if she had given him that reply.
One of the challenges we now face is that data is everywhere and we are often paralyzed by it. We even have a name for it – it’s called “big data.” Being the resourceful creatures that we are we assume because it is available, we should use it.
Beth and I have two high school seniors that are going through the process of deciding which colleges will win the lottery known as Mommy and Daddy’s savings account. The options available are amazing. What makes it even more complex is that like nearly all high school seniors they have no idea what they want to do when they grow up. Continue Reading…
We have a great expression in the South that you never want to receive from a friend – “Bless your heart.” It’s somewhere between “he just doesn’t know any better” to “that boy is as dumb as a ‘possum.”
I hear myself saying this a lot when new managers enter the ranks. I definitely heard it a lot when I started. Usually it is because they believe one thing to be true about how to lead and you know that in time they will discover otherwise.
The one that I wish I could get others to appreciate is to not judge their success by the size of their team. So many managers think that they are more important if their team is bigger. I once thought that as well. Continue Reading…
Why is it we often think we have better answers than those that know more about a situation? I ask this of myself often and never get a satisfactory answer. This came to a head this week with the recent events in the execution of Troy Davis.
What makes us believe that we are smarter than a jury of 12, countless appellate court judges and an investigative panel? Why is it that we think we know more than the commanding military generals in Iraq? Considering that the President of the US has far more confidential information about a situation why do we still think we have a better answer? Even as a teenager your mom was always wrong despite her years of experience.
Why is that? Continue Reading…
Pet sitting for friends is like being a grandparent – spoil them rotten and then send them home to be disciplined by their owners. We get great joy out of being the spoiler with Cassie, my brother-in-law Brian’s beautiful dog.
Rescued later in life, Cassie was clearly abused in her younger years. She is extremely skittish whenever someone moves near her, having her head down in fear for any human contact other than Brian.
Cassie has no reason to behave like this any longer. Brian is a wonderful, loving caretaker and we are equally loving with her every time she comes over. Yet Cassie is still scared after many, many years of interaction with us.
Cassie is afraid because she knows what a human is capable of doing. She has experienced something that she cannot forget – something stuck. It may have been a series of events or one really bad moment – we don’t know. Continue Reading…
I think some of the most dangerous husband and wife arguments start from the simplest of questions. I’ve seen first hand the graveyard of beaten egos that came as the result of an answer that seemed harmless at first. You can tell it is the wrong answer when you find yourself asking “Did I just say that out loud?” the minute the words come out of your mouth.
So as a service to you men out there that haven’t yet experienced one of these character building sessions, let me present to you the five questions that have only one acceptable answer. Continue Reading…
Why is it we seem to allow behavior in executives that we won’t tolerate in first level managers?
I’m not saying that all executives behave poorly; I think the vast majority are excellent role models. But why then do I see the screamers, the plotters, the hard-asses, the dictators, the debasers and the inherent desire to weaken others, in much larger proportion at the higher levels of management than the lower levels? It reminded me of why I stopped playing competitive tennis many years ago.
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I spent time this week with my boss and peers reviewing a difficult situation that we had to face. I am betting that you have had a similar circumstance – one where many people over a long period of time have made many mistakes that now culminate into one much more difficult problem. You really can’t point at one person and say this is why we are here today.
At the end of the conversation my boss looked at us and asked
One of my favorite scenes from Anchorman is when Brick declares his undying love for a lamp. I have that same sort of love for my Kindle.
If you are an avid reader how could you not love something that allowed your entire book collection be contained in 9 ounces of electronic wizardry? No more bright sun washout at the beach. No more lost bookmarks or folded pages. I can lookup words I don’t know and get the latest book from the comfort of my couch. Now I can read on my elliptical without having to forge some unnatural physical device to keep the pages open.
I love Kindle. It is utilitarian paradise.
Then why do I download all of my books to my iPad? Continue Reading…
Everyone has their pet peeves and I am no exception; mine are often words or phrases. You can tell when you have hit one by the very visible shiver that comes over me. Several of my friends know these phrases and purposefully use them in public situations to see if I can restrain myself. I have great friends.
As a teacher/student of creativity and innovation there are two phrases that do it for me. These have to be two of the most overused and most misunderstood topics used in management today. Continue Reading…
I was thinking back to a point 15 years ago when my kids were 2 and 3 years old. I thnk the first word they learned was “mine.”
That stuck-in-my-head memory came as a result of listening to two managers talk about moving an employee from one group to the other. I was fully expecting to hear “I’ll let him join your group if you give me a bushel of corn and a couple of otter skins.”
What is it about being a manager that makes many of us so territorial and possessive? It’s almost as if deep down we feel we own our employees, as if our value and importance rises by the number of people we manage. Continue Reading…
Instincts are a funny thing. Some of the greatest breakthroughs in history have been the result of trusting one’s instincts yet I can’t imagine any acceptable business plan that has “my gut tells me” as part of its rationale.
Why do these instinctual feelings that seem to point to the right answer need more solid reasoning before we move forward? What if we can’t find that solid reasoning – should they be abandoned?
What happens when we demand reason over instinct? Continue Reading…
If you are in your forties or later you probably remember that little 3 minute cartoon from Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday mornings. Three indeed is a magic number.
Did you know that the triangle is the only shape that cannot be deformed without changing the length of one of its sides? This is why the triangle is the basic element of structures called trusses used in bridge design as well as construction of house roofs. If you need strength, three is your number.
The human brain tends to remember things more effectively in groups of three as well. Writers learned this long ago and developed a word for it – the tricolon.
“Vini Vidi, Vici” – Julius Caesar
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people.” – Abraham Lincoln
Even famous quotes like Churchill’s “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” are pared down and remembered as blood, sweat and tears.
Photographers don’t use the Rule of Fourths, you never hear Old Fashioned Love Songs come down in four part harmony and Christians don’t worship the Holy Quad.
Three is a big deal.
Continue Reading…
I was a huge fan of Whose Line Is It Anyway, the British and later US improv comedy show. Those guys and gals were amazing. Having watched a lot of bad improv I can appreciate how difficult it must be to pull this off successfully so I wanted to learn the secrets of the trade.
Using the search phrase “improv comedy rules” I found that nearly all of the sites list the number one rule as “Do Not Block”. Blocking is when one actor sets up a line like “my you are a fine looking rooster” and the other doesn’t like the setup so replies with “I’m not a rooster, I’m a penguin” because he knows that penguins are funnier. This is never funny, it insults the previous comedian, and actually makes the newly self-titled penguin look weak – he wasn’t up to the task given to him.
It dawned on me that I see the same roosters and penguins conversation daily at work; Continue Reading…
I have a confession to make – I have been totally enthralled watching the World Cup cricket matches.
I have another confession to make – I could barely spell cricket a month ago.
Why the new found interest? It wasn’t because I needed another sport to watch. It was because I wanted to better understand something that was very important to many of the people on my team. The fact that I enjoyed it so much was an accident, but not really as I’ll explain later.
Over half of my team is from a country where cricket is of great interest – India, the UK and South Africa. So when the grandaddy of the them all, the World Cup, came around the buzz became pretty intense. When India made it to the semi-finals our office in India gave the folks the afternoon off. We don’t give days off when the Braves make it to the World Series so this is big!
Continue Reading…
I never really understood the obligatory post-game handshake between two football teams. Here are two teams that just finished the last three hours beating the snot out of each other and now they are expected to raise a smile and say “nice game”. While they will eventually get to that point, I am pretty sure that they don’t feel it at that moment.
Don’t get me wrong, I totally believe in sportsmanship and dealing graciously with winning and losing. I just don’t know how one can expect such a dramatic change in two minutes.
That’s because you can’t – and it is no different in the business world or any other part of life. We all have what a friend of mine calls “take-up time” If you want to lead others with a new idea you have to really understand this simple piece of human psychology. Continue Reading…