2008 March

What will you say “no” to in order to say “yes”?

March 21, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

To say “yes” to opportunity, brings “no” as well.

What will you do less of to make way for moving ahead?

For now, a few others’ thoughts on luck, priorities and persistence:

All of us have bad luck and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck – who keeps right on going – is the man who is there when the good luck comes – and is ready to receive it.
Robert Collier

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.
Herbert Swope

Action expresses priorities.
Mahatma Gandhi

Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.
H. L. Hunt

What comes first, the compass or the clock? Before one can truly manage time (the clock), it is important to know where you are going, what your priorities and goals are, in which direction you are headed (the compass). Where you are headed is more important than how fast you are going. Rather than always focusing on what’s urgent, learn to focus on what is really important.
Unknown

Filed Under: Leadership, People at Work, Quotes, Strategic Planning

Say YES!

March 20, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

The times are unnerving in some industries, and old ways are rapidly going away (tell me about it! My husband is a journalist and that industry, like many, is having some very slippery days).

As Seth Godin notes in a recent entry, Opportunity of a Lifetime, when times look tough is just when opportunity emerges for some, for those who are ready to play.

If a great opportunity were suddenly presented to you, would you, could you say “Yes!” to something that, in the past, you might have chased away?

Where might there be new opportunities for you, in areas you wouldn’t have seen, had the status quo stayed…and stayed?

Filed Under: Leadership, Serendipity, Strategic Planning

Open road

March 19, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Open road
Originally uploaded by jcgr.

Times for many are unpredictable, yes.

Yet the road is wide open for some, no matter what prognosticators project.

Where could there opportunity for you, in days ahead (even where you may not see it, yet)?

Surprises – large or small, good, even great ones – might be just around the bend.

- What was your last good surprise, at a time when you might not have expected good things ahead?

- What was the best surprise you ever had, something you never saw ahead?

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Images, People at Work, Serendipity, Strategic Planning

Learn your way through, part 2

March 19, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Change is the name of the game.

Expertise? It doesn’t stay fresh unless learning – readily, often – is part of your game.

“Experts tend to be good at their particular talent, but when something unpredictable happens — something that changes the rules of the game they usually play — they’re little better than the rest of us,” wrote John Cloud in a recent Time magazine article, The Science of Experience.

Top performers in athletics, medicine and other fields were cited. One of the key differentiators of top performers in the field of ice skating, for example, is their drive to learn, practice and perfect the most challenging parts of their game. Researchers and authors Janice Deakin and Stephen Cobley showed that top skaters spent significantly more practice time – 68% compared to 48% for lower performers – learning and improving the toughest parts of their performance, jumps, particularly the skills they had not perfected yet. And that drive to learn and perfect was what kept them competitive.

Lower-ranking competitors not only spent less time on jumps, but were more likely to invest time in skills with which they were already comfortable rather than to venture out into new territory they needed ultimately to conquer in order to become fully competitive.

Notes Cloud, “Rather than mere experience or even raw talent, it is dedicated, slogging…that leads to first-rate performance. And it should never get easier; if it does, you are coasting, not improving.”

Anders Ericsson, author of Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, labels this “deliberate practice,” meaning that this type of rigorous, focused, challenging practice of new skills is the often dreaded, but always vital difference-maker, barrier-breaker.

What lessons are here for you, then?

1. Where you need to venture out and learn new skills? Where have you been particularly resistant to that?

2. Where are your areas of expertise now less than fresh?

3. What do you and your team or company need to learn (or master) in order to continue to be competitive?

Filed Under: Business Results, Knowledge Management, People at Work, Process Management, Strategic Planning

Learn your way through

March 18, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Seemingly insurmountable problem before you? Territory that’s brand new?

Break it down into chunks. Then learn your way through.

And if you’re a leader, you might try the unthinkable. Be open about your learning process. You might be surprised about the impact that it has – on you, and the people who are following you.

In a small but recent example, my husband was entering information on a web resource for a course he teaches at a local university. Because the software is new to him, he was muttering under his breath as he worked. (Our sixteen-year-old son was listening to this dilemma and his dad’s response, as well. As a high school sophomore, Matt is still entrenched in the stage of life when one is graded on how well one learns and performs, on the spot, in a test).

As he worked, my husband fumbled. He grumbled. He mumbled.

I knew what he was going through. He was partly frustrated with himself as he stumbled along, knowing he didn’t know as much as he wanted to about how the system worked. And in his not-knowingness? He felt dumb (he didn’t say it, but I know what the early stages of learning something new feel like, too. You do sometimes feel…dumb…until you’ve learned enough that, finally, you don’t).

And I also knew that he’s not as frequently in the learning mode as I am (consultants are constantly in new circumstances). So he’s just less comfortable in the learning role, less trusting that he WILL find his way successfully through to the other side.

I called from the other room, trying to allay his fears that he’d never know what he needed to know on this task.

“Take it one step at a time. Experiment. Learning well means you know how to experiment well.”

He started to mutter less. The rhythm of the keys started to flow.

“And just remember – perfection takes a little time,” I added as he started to get comfortable in the learning role.

The muttering stopped. Learning just has a process and rhythm of its own.

The lesson here?

Remember to keep your learning muscles fresh. Learn often. Learn how to learn well.

And the next insurmountable problem that taunts you, and tries to block you?

Break it down.

Then learn and experiment your way through.

Filed Under: Knowledge Management, Leadership, Measurement, People at Work, Process Management, Serendipity

Great, Glorious Green

March 17, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Banana berries
Originally uploaded by jcgr.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, a quick shot of the greenest thing I’ve recently seen.

But the greenest thing of all? Ireland, herself.

Her rolling hills, even on a wet January day as the plane landed for a few weeks’ work in Cork?

Shimmering, shining emerald. Vibrant, electric. Iridescent. Almost unbelievably, supernaturally green.

The stark, elegant beauty, the intensity – inspiring and memorable, still.

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Images, Musings, Serendipity

Dreams vs. reality

March 13, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

I found a quote this morning that’s a wise advisory on almost any day.

But it’s “true-ness” seems even “truer” when you read it in light of the drama and the dilemmas that soon-to-be-ex-New York-governor Eliot Spitzer has created for himself in oh so many ways:

Chasing after fantasies is always a bad idea. Stick with reality. Reality’s all you’ve got. But here’s the real secret, the real miracle: It’s enough.
Brad Warner

And here’s another reality-based quote in much the same vein:

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
Unknown

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Leadership, People watching, Quotes

Small but significant changes

March 6, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Pause for a second…just a second…that’s all.

Recall one or two changes in the past that were seemingly small, but ultimately, very significant in their impact in your life.

These tiny shifts – like the smallest change in direction of the rudder of a ship – may, oh so quietly, have changed the direction of your life.

1. What were these changes?

2. Did you choose them, or did they seem to “just happen”?

3. What small choices or changes could you make now to simply, but perhaps significantly, improve the quality of your work or life?

Just a second or two, a minute, or a few. It may even change the course of a life.

Filed Under: Musings, People at Work, Process Management, Serendipity

Different, by design

March 5, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

WeLovIt
Originally uploaded by jcgr.

Designed for difference, the owners of this car want to make sure you know they like the results.

"WeLovIt" their license plate notes.

Filed Under: Business Results, Customer Focus, Images, People watching, Serendipity

Forged by the fire

March 5, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

The US political race continues, though it’s raging now on the Democratic side of the aisle. Who would have thought a few months ago that John McCain, expected to long ago have been down for the count while Rudy or Mitt ran the victory laps, would now be waiting to learn who his foe will be in the two-party boxing match ahead?

And whatever you think of Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama, the tight (and exciting – you have to admit*) contest in which they’re caught can make one of them more honed, more forged, more finely-tuned for the rough and tumble of the contest in the fall. That is, if they choose to use the current battle in that boot camp sense. This IS just a training round on both sides of the aisle, after all. The main event? Still ahead. Multiple contenders, red and blue both, have taken a fall when counting on imminent victory (or coronation).

Seth Godin refers in a post today to “The Forces of Mediocrity,” those forces that inevitably push and pull a new idea.

Inevitably, when there is the threat/promise of “new” ahead some people will try, even violently, to retreat to times and ways they think they have a greater chance of understanding or controlling.

I see the forces pushing against a new idea as forces that can forge it, refine it, prepare it for even bigger contests or purposes ahead.

Like it or not, if you’re the person in the vigorous contest or the person with the new idea, the circumstances you would wish away or send packing with the wave of a magic wand, if you could (“assume away all problems” is how my sister, an economist, sometimes kiddingly describes how dilemmas are treated in her profession) – AND the dogged complaints of your competitors or critics in a good (YES, good), hard-fought contest CAN make you and your ideas and products or services better, and more prepared for bigger challenges ahead.

Like it. Or not. It IS so often the way that it is.

USE the forces that push against you and threaten to throw you off-course to be better than you would be without them.

*It’s like a great NCAA basketball game going down to the wire in the midst of March Madness, or a tight, spectacular sports contest of any type that’s impossible to call, as you near the finish line, or the end of the game.

Filed Under: Business Results, Current Affairs, Leadership, People at Work, People watching