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.

The Buck Starts Here

Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the United States had a sign on his desk that read: "The Buck Stops Here". There was no mistake who was in charge, who would make the final decision or who would take ultimate responsibility should things go right or wrong during his administration.

Okay, now we know where the buck stops. But where does the buck start?

If you are in a revenue generation capacity and everyone in business is either directly or indirectly serving in that capacity, then we must accept that revenue generation is our responsibility. The Buck Starts With Us and those around us.

Before the buck can make its way into your pocket, it has to start somewhere and typically that beginning is centered in the mind of someone who has a great idea that can be executed well and satisfy a need.

After the great idea is adopted, the bucks necessary to make it a reality take a fairly predictable path. The buck moves from the conceptual stage, then to the number-crunching stage, then to the planning stage, on to production, to marketing and then to the selling stage and then to the collecting stage, then and only then, to the pockets of everyone involved.

The number of bucks you get is determined by the level of involvement you have in the process. If you want to make more bucks, get more involved. Your involvement may manifest in many ways including: the person who had the idea, the person who improved the idea, the individual involved in the planning or the processing, or the production, marketing, selling or the collecting. Your level of productive involvement may not result in immediate monetary gains, but the knowledge you gained by making your contribution will ultimately lead to increased earning opportunities resulting in more bucks for you!

You are either directly involved in generating bucks or you are directly involved in making designed efficiencies work, resulting in saving bucks. With either scenario, you are involved
in the ownership of making the company work better and make more bucks. The Buck has to start somewhere and it might as well start with you and everyone around you.