See a moment. Take a moment. Give a moment.
You have to be specific when you place your order.
Say you want a dog.
Is it large, REALLY large, the dog you want? Maybe you want an Irish Wolfhound, like the dog on the right.
Or, is your desired dog fluffy, white, a lap sitter, with bright brown eyes?
Then a Bichon Frise, the dog on the left, may be what you want.
When you place your order – whatever you seek – make sure you are specific.
For a dog is not just a dog, as you can clearly see.
A quick trip to the well-known labyrinth of shopping, IKEA, was on the docket recently.
This rapid-by-design trip provided important lessons, ultimately. These included the value of listening (really listening – not the artificial kind), experimenting, trusting, and taking risk-free shortcuts.
Let's back up a bit.
Our daughter and I needed to cover much ground and make a few big decisions in the limited time we had. We suddenly realized that before we lugged large, heavy boxes off shelves and worked our way through the checkout line, we needed essential information we didn't have – the exact dimensions of available space in the family van.
But to get that information in the limited time we had?
"I wonder if there's a shortcut to the parking lot…," I said outloud, to mostly to myself.
"No. I know the way!" our daughter insisted.
"I'll just ask," I countered.
"Is there a faster way to the parking lot?"I asked the first clerk I saw. Frankly, I was not really expecting much. Customer service is, for many companies, really an afterthought.
To my surprise, the clerk paid full attention.
He seemed to really care that the customer's words get through, and that the solution he presented be fully responsive to the problem that he was helping me to solve.
"Yes. There IS a better way!" he said emphatically, and proceeded to share the details of the quicker route.
Our daughter, was at that time, in that place, in no mood to experiment. She knew her trusted route. If his experiment didn't work, we would lose time, and be in worse shape. For her, the door to new information was clearly closed.
And the clerk? He was clearly frustrated that she would not listen as he tried so hard to help (did these two, about the same age, already know each other, I wondered? Had they perhaps even dated? Or did they remind each other of someone? A sister, a brother? There seemed to be an undercurrent of drama playing itself out between them, I noticed with a bit of curiosity and mild amusement).
I quickly measured the moment, and their relative knowledge of the circumstance. I considered the two responses, and their individual conviction that they each had the right answer.
And I decided, to our daughter's chagrin, to go with the more careful listener. In this case, it was the IKEA clerk's information I trusted.
"Let's just give his idea a try," I said to her, cheerfully, but firmly.
It turned out that he was right.
It was quick work to get to the parking lot, quick work getting the critical measurements, and, OK, it was not quick work getting through the checkout line. But he had helped pave the way to a good outcome. I smiled, my faith in good service intact for the day.
The lessons for me?
Listen.
And when you find a great listener, yourself, let them know that you appreciate their specialized skills. (The skills of attentive, effective, caring listening are actually very, very rare).
Experiment.
When you have the time and are in the right frame of mind, try to find or create a better, faster way to get things done. (I definitely understood my daughter's frame of mind. There are days for me, as well, when experimentation is exactly the wrong thing to try. Going with the known and trusted route is often the best decision, all around).
Trust.
If your tests of the information and information-providers are passed, trust the information, and take the next step.
Embrace the shortcut.
If a good shortcut is offered, and it doesn't shortcut the quality of the outcome, take the shorter, better path.
Pressure abounds – if we let it – at a personal, national and world level.
Here are just some of the circumstances where pressure is rife now:
Holidays filled with sky high expectations, and too little time, too little cash, too little sleep…
Closing out one year as well as can be done, and starting a new one with fresh, better habits.
Solving seemingly intractable problems (the national economy, for one), and doing it with aplomb.
Here's how a few others would advise you view and handle pressure:
When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.
Peter Marshall
By "guts" I mean, grace under pressure.
Ernest Hemingway
Pressure is a word that is misused in our vocabulary. When you start thinking of pressure, it's because you've started to think of failure.
Tommy Lasorda
In the game of life it's a good idea to have a few early losses, which relives you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season.
Lee Trevino
The pressures of being a parent are equal to any pressure on earth. To be a conscious parent, and really look to that little being's mental and physical health, is a responsibility which most of us, including me, avoid most of the time because it's too hard.
John Lennon
Without pressure, the work doesn't get done at all.
William Saroyan
When you're out there in the big league pressure cooker, a pitcher's attitude – his utter confidence that he has an advantage of will and luck and guts over the hitter – is almost as important as his stuff.
Bill Veeck
The pressure of getting an order right is greater than sinking a putt.
Amy Alcott
Simple, delicate beauty is created as water droplets cling tenaciously, yet tenuously to rose petals.
Temporary though this scene may be, for the moment, it is beautiful.
What delicate yet tenacious beauty do you see in your world?
It's there.
Today.
Somewhere.
Right now.
"When I smell biscotti baking, it smells like Christmas to me!" said our son, 16, the other day as I was in the first of a few days of High Biscotti Season. It's the few days each December when the kitchen becomes a biscotti factory, almost, as many kinds are baked for client team gift baskets and for family who live in distant places.
I guess it's in my blood, for my mother made an entire sweet shoppe full of treats at the holidays – cookies, candy, fruitcake (hers was light and good). I remember the kitchen when we were growing up being overtaken in the best possible way by the diligent production of all sorts of culinary excellence, much of which she would give away to friends and family.
What's Christmas, instantly for me? It's when I see fresh, white ice skates. Having grown up in the cold upper Midwest (Iowa, in my case), we would get new ice skates every few years for skating on a small lake at the local university.
So seeing new, white ice skates? It still makes me happy in an "Ahhh! It's Christmas!" sort of way.
What fragrances, sounds, music and memories make you instantly think "Christmas"?
Here's what a few others have to say about the season, the day:
Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.
Peg Bracken
Something about an old-fashioned Christmas is hard to forget.
Hugh Downs
It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.
W. T. Ellis
Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.
Robert Lynd
The perfect Christmas tree? All Christmas trees are perfect!
Charles N. Barnard
One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly.
Andy Rooney
Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more.
Dr. Seuss
California in December is not a snowy show.
It’s more like this, the green of rain-fed land, the gold of backlit leaves on a chilly evening’s walk.
Whatever sights and weather your December brings, may it be full of joy and peaceful things.
As a client and I were reviewing progress with her team on a major change and improvement project in her group, we realized there was a big barrier we hadn't anticipated when we first planned the work.
A key challenge for the change makers she was trying to create in her world?
They each wanted, more than anything, to make everyone happy.
Right here, right now. Every time.
"They haven't learned yet that happiness often – usually – takes hard work," we agreed, as we looked back on our own experience with the hard work of major and ultimately, very successful change-making.
Changing her team's focus from the short- to the long-range outcome will help them, a lot. They need to keep their eyes on the goal of the much greater happiness they're helping create – but it will show up later, not necessarily now.
And when the change begins to "take," it gives the change-makers' client group greater ease-making skills of their own.
It grows their innovative skills, and takes them out of the relentless EMT mode.
The client and I need to help her would-be change makers see beyond the immediate resistance and push back they've already felt. They need the "it will be, it is becoming better" experience that simple, consistent practices build.
Which brings me to a few questions I'm thinking through, too:
- What's the hard work of happiness for you?
- What's the payoff you want and can have sometime later, if you defer short- or immediate happiness now?
- What's one simple change that, if you start it now, can lead to much greater happiness down the road for you?
Signs of the holiday season emerge gradually. We're moving into the full swing soon.
Here, lighted stars and a luminous tree convey the spirit of the season with beauty and great simplicity.
I had to smile when reading Seth Godin's recent blog entry, The making chasm. He's describing a condition that's a big contributor to the economic Condition We're In, nationally, and in the world.
"There's a lot I want to experience, but not a lot I want to actually do," Godin quotes from a recent New Yorker cartoon.
So true. There's a very big difference between actual large- and small-scale (they all count!) do-ers and the legions of coattail riders and "me-too'ers."
When someone asked a friend a few years ago to leave the large, lumbering company she was working for in order to take the risky but exhilarating reins at a rapidly growing company, he asked, "How long are you going to keep hiding out here?"
He knew her well. She liked her job and did it well, but she was capable of doing more than she was doing.
I love working with big dreamers – at large and small companies, both – who aren't satisfied with stopping with a dream. They must see the idea through as big doers, too. They're typically trying to lead a team of people enrolled in the "big doing," and that's often when the real fun begins (It's true. And, of course, there's uncertainty, exhilaration, and exhaustion at times, too).
I'm often called in to help them find the best way to ensure that those dreams and good intentions aren't just a flash in the pan, an idea that's an "also ran."
They often need help planning, designing/redesigning and then creating optimal flows of ideas, information and actions leading to great decisions, focused and coordinated individual efforts, all leading to big results. We set them up for success now, and for the long-run, too.
The people involved and invested in meeting big goals, once the hard push of the "doing" is through?
Once they've tasted it, those do-ers are greedy for the invigorating experience of getting more great work done, producing more results.
It's not a cerebral experience they seek. It's visceral, this doing, this powerful work and team action that turns big dreams, gradually, into big results.
This cast of eager, experienced do-ers is the force for creation, innovation and great results that you want on your side the next time you have a big dream, a big goal, and much good doing to do.
