My Finger Might Be Broken

The day was especially hot in deep south, Texas. The considerable heat was not unusual for August in the Valley but this day was really, really hot!

After work, I decided to go for a refreshing swim in our backyard pool. Walking outside I noticed my beautiful wife and her niece sitting on the steps of the pool. They obviously had the same idea as I.

After I gave my wife a kiss and said hello to her niece, I dove in.

My routine was to dive in the shallow end and swim underwater to the deep end, touch the end of the pool with my hands and swim back to the shallow end. This exercise provided me the opportunity to cool off more quickly since I swam underwater the entire way.

When I approached the deep end of the pool and reached out with my left hand to touch it so I could reverse my course, I heard a strange cracking sound and felt a unique sensation. Feeling something wasn't right I surfaced and looked at my now disfigured finger, I feared, that my finger might be broken. My finger was dislocated. So without thinking, I grabbed the end and pulled! The finger popped back into place with minimum discomfort and immediately began to swell.  So as a precaution, I took my wedding ring off and as it turned out, that was a very good idea. My finger continued to swell and if I had left the ring on we would have been in the emergency room with a doctor handling a metal cutting tool that was designed for much larger industrial projects.

After the finger healed, the knuckle was disfigured to the extent that my wedding ring would not fit.

Considerable time passed and the knuckle refused to return to its normal size.

I was talking to my wife about the continuing condition of my disfigured knuckle and said I was tired of waiting on my finger to heal so I could wear my wedding ring and we needed to get me one that fit, even if it was going to rattle around because of the size of my abnormal knuckle. She decided I should give my old ring a try to see how far off we were from it going over the knuckle. With a bit of convincing, the ring fit!

My wedding ring is very important to me because it is a visual sign of my commitment. I have always been deeply committed, but the ring represented a visual reminder to me, my wife and the world.

Making commitments is easy, keeping commitments takes dedication. When you make a commitment, create a visual reminder of that commitment. When you see the reminder, you will know that your commitment is strong and requires your continuing dedication because commitments don't stick to people, people stick to them.

It is just more work for the teacher and the student

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish; feed him for a lifetime.

We are all called to teach.
We are all called to learn.

Teaching is work. In reality, teaching someone something new often requires a great deal more energy and time than does just doing the work yourself. Teaching requires patience. What we have to learn to to do, we learn by doing. But until someone that knows what they are doing, teaches us how to get it done, we are all fishing and floundering!

Learning is work. We all need to be taught. Learning requires patience. The right people are willing to help you learn and know that frustration is a positive byproduct of learning. Learning by observing and paying close attention will be productive as long as you are open and willing. The actual doing will likely be more difficult than you expect it to be. Everything is hard at first but know that repetition is the Mother of education. So do it over and over and over; wrong, until you get it right.

When endeavoring to learn, ask for help from someone that actually knows how to do that which you want to learn. The right people want to and are willing to help, if you will just ask. The first step in asking for help is getting past your disinclination to ask, for fear of being rejected or judged. If you don't ask, the answer is always no.

Be wary of the overzealous "I can do anything" person who says they can help when they really have no idea what they are doing. Choosing the right teacher is half of the solution. The other half is making sure you are the right student. The right teacher is willing to teach and has no reservations about issuing necessary correction without damaging the will of the student. The right student is willing to learn and accepts correction without being offended.

Find the folks with the battle scars. You can't actually see the scars but you can tell they are there by the confidence these warriors exude when they walk the walk and talk the talk. They are the finest teachers.

When you stop learning you stop. If you stop teaching, others stop.

The Pizza Delivery Guy Disagrees

He drives an old pickup truck that has very little of the front bumper and grill remaining. The rest of the truck's body is tattered at best. His tires really need replacing and he drives, in the VERY HOT summer, with the windows down. Often, when he is waiting on the pizza order to be completed so he can make his deliveries, he sits outside and smokes a cigarette. His clothes are okay but nothing that would make anyone envious. He is not especially noticeable because he's just not.

He is as dependable as the rising of the sun and the setting of the same.

Every weekday I see him coming in to work, check in and start making deliveries. Every weekday! I cannot remember a time when he was not at work making the pizza shop a success.

Any of us might understandabally look at his vehicle, his clothing or the way he spends his time waiting (smoking a cigarette) and make a qualitative judgement about his relative value, being likely low. And we would all be dead wrong. The pizza place depends on this delivery guy. Most of their business is delivery and without his dependability, they would struggle, mightily.

Making a great pizza that people want to buy is what the pizza shop does. The delivery guy completes the cycle. It really does not matter how good the pizza is unless the delivery guy makes his delivery. The role he plays is as important as any other role in the business. He also picks up some of the payments.

You may not feel that what you are doing is important but the pizza delivery guy would disagree. He sees his role as mission-critical and you should see your role the same way. Overall, in the great scheme of things, what you do may not make or break the business. But you would not be there if what you are responsible for is not responsibly important. Visualize your role as big and getting bigger. This mind-set will subconsciously move you in a direction of greater responsibility. And greater responsibility starts with being as dependable as the pizza delivery guy!

The Blue Reality

Dylan was a great kid. He was only eight when he was taken from us. Far too early in his and our lives. We are not as complete without him as we were with him. The loss is deep and will be with us until we cross over. The reality is, that he is gone from this world and marched boldly into the next world.

The memorial service for Dylan was very touching and hopefully, to those who were closest to Dylan, especially comforting.

Even at eight, Dylan knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. Dylan was going to be a law enforcement officer. More specifically he was going to be on a SWAT team. His super hero was Spider Man and I am sure that watching Spider Man fight the criminals and really bad people inspired Dylan to one day wear a SWAT badge on his law enforcement uniform.

When the Law Enforcement agencies learned of Dylan's untimely death and moreover his professional aspirations they mobilized to see how they could somehow make a difference. What a difference they made!

One of the most moving facets of Dylan's memorial service was when the members of several local law enforcement agencies marched, in full uniform, down the aisle and stood in reverence, as the appointed member of each team addressed Dylan's Mother. Each agency had special items to give Dylan's Mom including a Texas Flag that had flown over the State Capitol and a SWAT patch making Dylan's professional aspirations a reality. The emotion and dedication these professionals demonstrated was incredibly powerful and, just like Dylan, their actions will never be forgotten.

These are the very men and women that would have risked their lives to save Dylan or any one of us should the situation call for such dedicated action. They stood in reverence and grace as they paid their respect and offered condolences with their presence and their words. Dylan would have been proud of these consumate professionals who have a heart for the broken hearted.

The Blue Reality is that the vast majority of law enforcement professional are dedicated and honorable people who deserve our respect, support and backing. I hope they have yours. They most assuredly have  mine and if he were still with us, they would have Dylan's.

Your Brand

What do you like and what do you dislike?

When it comes to brands, everyone has a bias. You either like a brand, love a brand, dislike a brand or disdain a brand. There is no grey area in branding. Rarely, went it comes to labels, does anything conjure up more decisive emotions than when a brand appears.

Brands are a big part of our everyday lives. Companies literally spend million and millions of dollars establishing, promoting, protecting and preserving their precious brands. Brand perception and realities can make or break fortunes.

Consider the colossal and apparently deliberate damage that the Volkswagen brand is currently facing regarding their diesel vehicles. Volkswagen is going to pay a massive financial and brand-damaging price for this breach of trust. I like Volkswagen and have since the Beetle, Sirocco and Karmann Ghia , and have held their brand in high esteem. I owned a Beetle (always wanted a Sirocco) and the car was extremely dependable. But alas, VW has made a huge brand blunder.

Brands can and do recover when they are damaged even when the wound is self-inflicted. But that recovery is not guaranteed and it is almost always lengthy, consuming and expensive.

My intention is not to bash any brand, simply to establish how important and valuable the trust we place in brands is and how relevant that value and trust is when we make decisions.

Just like companies, you have a brand. Your brand determines how people react to you and your depth of inclusion in their professional or personal lives. Being real and forthright is a fine avenue for building your brand. You need people to unambigouslly understand what you stand for.

Having a strong brand will get you consistently and considerably further than all of your working knowledge. People need to know that you are going to be true to your brand. The right people will usually and patiently accept whatever growth stage you are in when dealing with you, but they will not be patient or accepting if your brand is not a brand they can count on. A brand must be consistent.

First, build your brand, then establish your brand, then live your brand and once established continouslly and jealously protect your brand.

Living Tomorrow, Today

Sure would be nice if we could live our tomorrows today.

Or would it?

Haste often does make waste, even thought there are many, many situations that will absolutely warrant a sense of urgency. Mentally moving too fast can cause serious unintended consequences. A sense of urgency can produce desirable results once a path is charted. However, attempting to live tomorrow, today will likely cause you to look beyond the obvious and miss something important.

Time really is a great common denominator. How we spend our time and how much time we spend on something tells us and others what we value. Spending time relishing moments that appear to be common may prove to be some of the wisest and most valuable time you will ever spend. Choosing to leap ahead mentally into the future will occupy your thoughts to a point of missing life's everyday gratifications.

Tommor will come and being prepared is sound judgement. Unsound judgment, is allowing your tomorrows to cloud your todays.

You can't take the second step until you have taken the first step and the first step may be the one you take today, opening the door to take more steps in the future. Take as many steps as you can reasonably manage today and your tomorrow's productive steps will be a direct result of your actions today, not an indirect casualty. Tomorrow you can build on the momentum you created today.

Each day presents you with the unique opportunity to leave your positive mark on your life and the lives of others. Spend today wisely and gratefully. Today is today and what you make of it, is entirely yours, as is tomorrow.

Don't try to sound smart

My desire is not to sound smart.

There are people who try to sound smart and to what end? Who, precisely, other than themselves are they trying to impress?

My self-proclaimed worthy goal is, to become smarter by reading, researching, asking questions and listening to answers, doing, falling down-getting back up and always moving forward toward the objective.

There will be more wheat than chaff to your carefully selected words if you deliver messages filled with facts and skip the fluff.

Getting informed and staying on top of changes within a specific industry or business type is absolutely necessary to your success and the more focused and geographically targeted your findings are the more relevant. Becoming proactive in your increasingly informed professional posture not only helps you better relate to challenges and opportunities, it helps you to help others. When you study and gain a greater understanding, you can talk intelligently as opposed to fruitlessly attempting to sound smart.

In a fine Neil Simon play, a character uttered this piercing line when describing another character's conversational acumen: "They don't have much to say. It's just that you have to listen to so much to figure that out." 

Don't attempt to posture yourself as smart by trying to sound smart. You either are smart because you  currently possess relevant knowledge and you are actively increasing your knowledge, or you are not. There is no grey area in knowledge levels or knowledge lift.  Smart people know when they don't know. Insincere and uneducated talk, that is intended to impress, typically deafens ears faster than a screaming baby in a restaurant!

"I don't know" is a great answer when you don't know. The appropriate and comprehensive response when you don't know is:  "I don't know, but I will find out and get back to you." But do not try to buffalo your way past a situation where it is patently obvious you have no idea what you are talking about. Better to remain silent and be assumed ignorant than to open your uneducated mouth and remove all doubt.

A sure way to sound really, really dumb in a vain attempt to sound very smart is to use vocabulary that is obscene and offensive. If you don't have a smart enough vocabulary sufficient to make your point without using offensive or obscene language, it is entirely likely that you don't have a point worthy of consideration.

You Better Not Touch That, It's Hot!

Unless something is glowing or smoking it is really tough to determine if it is hot by just looking. Most of us have been in situations when we were warned that the item we were considering touching was hot. We couldn't tell by looking, so in order to satisfy our curiosity and to prove the person issuing the warning wrong and ourselves right, we touched the item. And of course it was hot. As the pain of the burn set in, our behavior was immediately and positively modified. We learned that things may be really hot even thought they don't look like it and in the future, we might seriously consider modifying our behavior and become a better listener.

My Mother had six children and I am absolutely sure that I caused her more consternation with my undesirable behavior than the other five combined.

Modification of my less than desirable behavior was a continual challenge to her. She employed a variety of Behavioral Modification Devices (BMD's) in order to achieve the desired result, which was, changing my direction. My Mother was wise enough to know that until she helped me to change my behavior, she could not help me change my direction. And from her observation point, my direction was often in need of a new and more opportunistic path. My behavior needed modifying far too often.

Fortunately my Mother did not shy away from helping me modify my undesirable behavior. She took a stand and made sure I learned from the experience of behavioral modification.

The need to modify behavior may be challenging to see on the surface. But once the need to make modifications becomes apparent, because what you have been doing is not achieving the desired outcome, behaviors must change and an urgency to change is better than a overly cautious approach.

One of the most effective methods of modifying behavior is to incorporate a simple process of meaningful, yet simple, measurement(s). Consider committing to doing one additional meaningful activity on a daily business, such as setting aside 30 minutes to read a self-help or business book or doing an increased level of physical activity. Track your commitment and see if the behavioral change is helping to accomplish your objectives. Be careful to not set expectations unrealistically high or add too many measurement because you may be defeating your purpose by creating confusion.

Unless someone takes a stand and demands that behaviors are modified, one cannot expect much else to change. Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome has often been used as the definition of insanity. Changing behavior is akin to changing culture. Situations, even though they might be beyond your control,  often demand a change in behavior and although it can be vitally necessary it is not often easy or painless. But changing behavior for the better, is almost always worth the effort and most assuredly illuminates your desire and willingness to improve.

You Can't Lift Up by Putting Down

Surely or hopefully it makes sense to accept that you cannot lift someone up by putting them down.

Unfortunate as it is, there are people who believe that the intellectual "put-down" is the most effective method to motivate. These are the self aggrandizing individuals that likely consider themselves to be a hammer. When you think you are a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Consider for a moment the most valuable aspect of the hammer and nail relationship. The hammer is used to place the nail in the desired location. When placed properly, the nail holds things together. There are a lot of things that will work as a substitute for a hammer; a rock, a shoe, a pair of big pliers.  Hardly anything can sufficiently replace a nail. The nail, with its very specific characteristics, is basically irreplacable. Nails are tough, but if you hammer too hard on a nail it might bend. A hammer without a nail, has little value and a bent nail will not work properly. Even if you are able to straighten the nail out, the place where the bend occurred is weakened, forever.

People that "put-down" attempt to ingratiate themselves to leaders and peers by believing there is great intellect demonstrated by criticizing folks and ideas that are not their own. These people really do not care how much damage they do to others, they are all about themselves. Hurting anyone in order to help yourself is not smart at all and will not, in the long run, pay dividends.

Professor Teresa Amabile of the Harvard Business School published an experiment entitled "Brilliant but Cruel". Her findings showed that people who gave negative book reviews were perceived as less likable but more intelligent, competent and expert than people who wrote positive reviews of the same books. She summarized he findings by stating: "Only pessimism sounds profound. Optimism sounds superficial".

Criticism cuts to the bone, but sincere and truthful encouragement heads straight to the heart and the heart is where true motivation is found. The heart is where change takes place. When you approach any situation with a sincere desire to make a positive contribution you will find a way to make a valid point without damaging the folks you are working with and in doing so, you will improve your own status and deservedly feel better about yourself.

Hope This Doesn't Hurt

I sure hope this doesn't hurt too much, but it ain't about you, nor is it about me!

(I am going to have to use I far too often in this piece because I will be using personal experience to make the point I want to make.) 

Guess by now you have all heard that there is no I in Team. That is because there isn't an I in Team and for very good reason. No person is an "I" island.

I learned this important lesson the hard way. More accurately, the importance of "I", was taught to me in what I like to characterize as an overly harsh and stunningly blunt manner. 

After several years at a my first profession and one that would last for over 35 years, I decided to take my first vacation. 

My clients and the business would be placed in grave danger. 

You see I was the only self serving person I knew that could handle my clients and additionally, keep the sales team together. No one in the history of this 100 year old business was as, or had ever been, as capable as I was in preforming these mission critical functions. I handled my clients better than they had ever been handled and my voluntary and selfish absence, although it would be for only a week, might create panic amongst my clients and prove fatal to the business. 

Without my daily leadership, my clients would fail to breathe and the sales team would likely disintegrate or at the very least be severely damaged and beaten back to the point of stone age mentality. When I returned we just might have to start over. Talking a much deserved and needed vacation might just end the professional world as I knew it! The risk I was taking was almost beyond description. 

Independent of these very real "I" dangers, I took my first vacation. 

When I got back from my first vacation,  I was shocked to find everyone still working and the business seemed normal. My client's welcomed me back but not one of them had any horror stories abut how they were mistreated or how lost they felt without my irreplaceable involvement. 

The sales team, and in fact the entire business, was humming right along as if I had never left. Imagine how I felt. I simply could not believe what I was seeing. I was stunned. 

I didn't even have any "While You Were Out" calls to return. 

Thankfully, that is the day that I learned; it ain't about me. It is about the business and the team. But more importantly, it is all about the clients. The business is bigger than everybody including me or "I", as I liked to put it! 

Fortunately, and with our any fanfare, I humbly accepted that it had never been about me, it had rightful been about we! 

Think Big Act Small - Just Like Babies

If you can change, you can (Fill in this bank).
Babies do.

Most people don't like to think about change. Change is often terrifying to many people, largely because they are afraid of the uncertainty of the outcome. How and how much things and people will be different after the change takes place causes deep consternation amongst most of us.  The reality is that change is taking place all of the time and the best way to make to most of change is to be proactive. Babies don't fear change. Babies predictibally react adversely to a change in routine, but they don't consciously fear it.

Thoughtful, positive change is the absolutely best method for ensuring a greater level of accomplishment. You can either be proactive in changing or you can react. Change is going to take place so you might as well buckle down and start making changes that benefit you and the folks you are working with. You can either make the decision to change by thinking big and acting small or you can let other people make those decisions for you. Either way, you are going to change. Babies do.

Think big and act small. Think about how big of a change you are going to make and then start by acting small and make initial progress one step at a time. Once you have created some momentum you can occasionally take some bigger steps and even tie a few steps together. Babies are like that. They learn a few things and then WOW they make huge intellectual leaps! Babies don't know they are growing they just grow. Babies grow because it is the natural thing to do. Babies learn to walk by falling down, naturally. Change can become a natural occurrence for you, if you are proactive.

So, keep in mind that as you change and move toward the desired outcome you are going to fall down. Individually or collectively we all fall down. Get up. Small steps with a big goal is how you change. Think big and act small, just like babies.