2008 June

Test drive

June 19, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

We’ve had occasion recently to test drive in our family. Here are just two examples:

- Cars and a possible career shift, for our recent college-graduate daughter

- Colleges, for our soon-to-be high school junior son

I’ve known since I was 14 how valuable test drives can be. I’d had the dream since I was three of becoming a doctor, and found out during one short (or long, depending on your perspective) summer as a candy-striper that I HATED the hospital environment. It was NOT the place for me.

At the same time, I’d also already had an unintentional career test drive when I was ten, and started my first business, a cookie baking and delivery business, in order to make the money to buy my first really nice bike. I found out I LOVED being an entrepreneur…liked the bike, LOVED the business and the process of creating and providing products, and a service, that customers loved.

Our kids are finding out how valuable test drives can be, as well.

How about you? For example:

- What was the last test drive you took?
- Did it help, and if so, how?
- Did your original plan change, as a result? How?
- Would you have known that if you had not done that test run?

There may be a “drive before you buy” you might find valuable sometime soon, such as for a:

- Career or job change
- Move to a new home or city
- Role change
- New product you’d like to produce and market
- New business you’d like to start
- New process to get your work done better or more easily
- Route you drive
- Transportation you use
- New hobby you have, or would like to add
- Skill you’d like to develop

Take a spin. Find a way to test drive before you buy.

Filed Under: Business Results, People at Work, Strategic Planning

The beauty of exuberance

June 17, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Exuberance, and abundant enthusiasm is on my mind today. You know from your own life, I expect, the truth of this:

Exuberance is beauty.
- William Blake

Here are a few other thoughts as idea-starters, about the value and power of exuberance:

You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world.
- Sheilah Graham

Essentially, the [New York] Philharmonic is just like any other orchestra-they all have the spirit of kids, and if you scratch away a little of the fatigue and cynicism, out comes a 17-year-old music student again, full of wonder, exuberance and a tremendous love of music.
- Zubin Mehta

A review of a ballet:
Danced by Birmingham Royal Ballet with a passion and exuberance that takes the breath away. It is simply stunning. Fresh, pure and utterly uplifting.
- Pat Ashworth

Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.
- Yoko Ono

Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation Then, in your exuberance and bounding energy you say you’re going to add to that. Then you add rhyme and meter. And your delight is in that power.
- Robert Frost

Exuberance is better than taste
- Gustave Flaubert

The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
- Ferdinand Foch

Filed Under: Quotes

Do you WANT the job…THIS job?

June 16, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Our son, 16, is interviewing later today for his first paid job. To help him prepare for the questions ahead, I asked him if he wants the job, THIS job, and if so, why.

“The person who is interviewing you wants to know that you want THIS job, and why you’re perfect for it.”

He smiled, thinking to himself that it sounds like a good job, yes, and on the path that’s right for him, taking the long view. His dream job, though? Not yet. He knows he has to work his way up to that, a step at a time, a year at a time, experience by experience.

Take a second and think about your work:

- Do you want the job you have?

- What do you love about the job you have?

- What could you do without?

- Is there something you can do to make your job more perfect for you while, of course, still meeting your customers’ and manager’s requirements?

Filed Under: Business Results, Musings, People at Work

A setting for lofty thought-making

June 15, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

It’s easy to think lofty thoughts at this altitude
Originally uploaded by jcgr.

Sometimes a great setting is all it takes to shake loose new, different and better ideas for improved thought-making leading to improved action-taking.

Here, an elevated setting at UC San Diego. I wonder if it is actually used, or just attention-getting.

Either way, it shakes loose new ideas.

Filed Under: Images, Musings, People at Work, Serendipity

Irrepressible, in all the best ways

June 14, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

If you’re a news- and political-watcher, as we are in our family (my husband was a political science major who is now a Bay Area journalist), the sudden death yesterday of NBC news political journalist Tim Russert probably stunned you, as well.

We’ve listened to the reports about Russert’s life and legacy.

Despite how tough he was as an interviewer, he was very well-respected and much loved, clearly. Friends, colleagues, competitors – all – speak with great respect about a man who affected them all with the exuberant, energetic way he lived and worked.

What struck me as I watched segments of this morning’s “Today Show,” was how many people, when asked about Tim and his impact on their lives, instantly broke into big smiles, irrepressible themselves, as a story about the man would naturally spill forth, usually about Tim’s irrepressible love of his life, his work, his family.

About how exuberantly he threw himself into his life, whatever he was doing.

In what areas of your life do you live fully, even exuberantly?

And in what parts can you – and how can you – begin to add more enjoyment, more “irrepressibility,” in all the best ways?

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Musings, People watching

All that’s missing? Common sense…

June 12, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

I saw an odd thing at Nordstrom yesterday, an almost pony-sized poodle, bouncing and barking in the women’s shoe department (his/her owner was in tow, yes).

It made me think about common sense.

My husband and I were trying to define the term the other day. We know it when we see it. We know it when we don’t.

Out of curiosity, how would you define “common sense”?

And if you were the manager of this store, would you, and if so, how would you tell the owner that her pony-sized friend belonged at home, instead?

Filed Under: Leadership, Musings, People watching

If you work hard good things will happen

June 11, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

If you work hard good things will happen
Originally uploaded by jcgr.

So true…a quote from Charles Gwynn, Sr., on the base of a statue of his son, Tony Gwynn at Petco Park in San Diego, CA.

What are few experiences from your own life when this was certainly true, too?

Filed Under: Business Results, Images, People at Work, Process Management, Quotes

Pre-experience success (even if you’re scared, yes)

June 10, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Staring down a new goal, taking on a big challenge can be frightening.

My plan at those times?

I try to “pre-experience” success, to imagine successfully doing what’s new or frightening to do, and then imagining having successfully arrived at the finish line.

Think back, for example, to taking your driving test.

Our son just dealt with that. Some friends passed on the first try. Some failed first time out. One has failed twice (and no, he is not driving…yet).

Matt, knowing the risks of failure, decided to practice even more, not less. Backing up in a straight line was what seemed to worry him most, somehow. Backing up in a straight line was what took some of his friends down, license-wise (when I was learning to drive, what scared us most was parallel parking. I never even thought about being afraid of backing up in a straight line, with parallel parking ahead).

In any case, I reminded Matt what the examiner’s goal surely was to ensure that he was putting a safe driver on the road. To do that, the test would surely see if:

- The driver-to-be can handle the everyday basics of driving well and safely
- He or she has the judgment, calmness and ability to handle unpredictable or dangerous circumstances safely

And to handle Matt’s concern about backing up in a straight line, I offered this advice about pre-experiencing success:

- Think straight line
- Feel straight line
- Believe straight line
- Drive straight line

It all happens fast, of course, but the more you can pre-experience achieving your goal, the more, I’ve found, success is likely.

(And, by the way, yes, he passed, and is enjoying the fresh wave of freedom of movement – and the burden of paying for gas).

Filed Under: Leadership, People at Work, Process Management

Priorities, priorities

June 9, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Give your brain enough attention
Originally uploaded by jcgr.

A great quote in the floor of the new student union addition at UC San Diego.

(Just think of the power we’d collectively have if everyone did that…)

Filed Under: Images, Musings, People at Work, Quotes

Move the wave

June 8, 2008 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Never give up, ever give up?

That’s what sages from ages past advise.

However, sometimes quitting is most wise.

Sometimes the sagest decision of all is to stop and choose a better time, or to move and then renew the race, the climb, the attempt at crowd-moving, team-inspiring.

That’s the thought I had as I watched with some admiration, some amusement as one enthusiastic man tried to get a “wave” started, and fully alive in the upper deck of a recent Padres-Cubs game at Petco Park in San Diego.

The image of success this wave-starter surely had in mind? A beautiful, synchronous sweep of thousands of people rising and falling in a powerful rhythm all around the stadium, and then around, again, and again.

Instead, his third attempt at trying to breathe life, energy into this would-be event resulted in a “wave” of just one person: himself.

The lessons, I thought as I watched his valiant efforts, seemed to include:

- Know when to fold the tent.
- Size up the crowd, the conditions, and your own leadership skills. Learn from what worked, and didn’t.
- Refine.
- Try again in a better place, at a better time, or a better clime.
- Find, create or accelerate the conditions that are right for the “wave” to start, grab hold, and then pick up enough steam so it can roll on and on using the natural power and rhythm the experience releases in the crowd (it’s almost like having – or not having – the right conditions to form a cloud. Just enough of the right conditions, at the right time, in the right place leads to a cloud, instead of just dispersed moisture, air, energy).

Filed Under: Customer Focus, Leadership, People watching