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Showing posts from 2020

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

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It is very interesting to me as I learn about the college search process with my daughter. She is a junior in high school and we've seen a number of presentations around what she should expect and plan for, even as early as her freshman year. It is crazy the pressure on kids to figure out what they want to do with the rest of their life. They are told that they need to start taking classes as a freshman to put you on a path to not only being ready for college but improving your chances of being accepted. The irony is during the same presentation they are told that college isn't for everyone and there are lots of different learning opportunities to prepare them for a career that best suits them, many of which don't involve a four year degree. They should use high school to take a variety of classes and explore what they may want to do. But, if they wind up figuring out what they want to do requires a four year degree they could be having to catch up if they took to many elec

Your Voice Matters

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With the recent election in the US, depending on the state you are in it can feel like your vote doesn't matter. After all 150 million votes were cast 1 single vote doesn't change the outcome. Your vote is your right, and your voice. It used to be that women or African Americans couldn't vote. They didn't have a voice. If your voice doesn't matter, why do so many people fight for the right to be heard? Your voice matters. The vast majority of us in the human race will not be remembered after we are gone. What we say or what we write may not be heard or read by many people, but you have influence over your audience, no matter how small it is. The audience that counts probably more than any other is ourselves. Even if nobody else hears us, even if nobody else thinks that our vote matters, it is what we tell ourselves that becomes more true than anything.  Never let anyone tell you your voice doesn't matter.

My Thoughts On COVID-19 And The Second Wave

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In the US and some other places around the world a second serious wave is happening with COVID-19. We are seeing businesses and activities have to shut down again after months of limitations have already reduced things to a point some are having to close their doors for good. It is interesting watching how people react to changes like this. The outrage and the arguments people have over certain policies are truly astonishing. Yes all of this sucks but the more people don't follow the simple guidelines the longer this continues to spread. You look at countries around the world and some have enacted far stricter policies but they have essentially wiped out the disease and they have mechanisms to quickly identify and contain things before they get out of hand. In America that is never going to happen because we like our freedoms too much.  This virus is going to continue to be a problem until an effective vaccine is available and distributed to the majority of the population. The time

Comparing The View Of The Value Of Time

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We all know time is precious and it is the only resource we can't make more of. Yet we continue to waste it and continue to forget how precious our time is. In any activity there is the task, or what we want to get done. Around it are additional factors that determine the outcome of the task. There is quality, the tools we have, the money invested and the time it takes to get the task done.  Over the summer I built a retaining wall. It was one of the most time intensive projects I've ever done. It required more time to have a finished product I could be proud of. Taking the time to do it right ensured I won't have headaches later on of things shifting and becoming uneven. That would cause it to look terrible and possibly require me to redo it which would not be fun. I could have spent less time on it but it wouldn't have turned out as nice. I could have spent more money on it and hired a professional to build it for me.  In any project people will sacrifice something ba

Applications Of The Project Management Triangle

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In my work there is a concept called the project management triangle, it deals with four main qualities you try to balance. Time - The total number of hours it is going to take and over how many days/weeks/months/years. Cost - What it is going to cost in dollars and cents Scope - What features are included Quality - How well put together the product is. There is a tradeoff with this so we typically say as the client you can pick two, but then those doing the work get to set the other two. If you want something fast and cheap, it is not going to have a lot of features and it likely won't be the best quality. If you want something fully featured really fast, it is going to cost you. It is a pretty simple concept, but not one many people probably talk about except maybe a handful of times in their life. I work in software development and it is a common conversation had almost every day. The interesting thing about it though is how much it applies to almost any area of our lives. If yo

What Comes After The Disagreement?

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I sure hope you weren't thinking as soon as the election was over things would get back to normal. We shouldn't be shocked by how things are going right now. And we shouldn't think things would be any different had the results gone the other way. Based on how close the election was in so many states it is clear how equally divided we still are. Where we go after the disagreement will tell us what our future is going to look like. Our country is an organization, like so many others. Like any organization it has conflicts and decisions to make. Not everyone is going to agree with every decision. Say you are launching a new product, some think it should be green, some think it should be orange. In most organizations, before you decide on the color, you have a discussion, listing the pros and cons for each choice and trying to make the best decision you can. When the company decides it is going to be green you have people that might not get behind the decision, waiting for the

Ownership, Accountability And Responsibility, Oh My!

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Ownership, accountability and responsibility. I'm not going to attempt to break down the differences in these words and what they actually mean. When you hear those three words it is easy to get a picture in your mind the concept I'm talking about.  You are either the type of person that wants more of it or the person that avoids it. As a manager we want to find and promote the people that exhibit it.  The problem is how hard it is to find and evaluate. Anyone can tell you stories in an interview of their responsibilities, how they took ownership of something or how they were accountable in a situation. I see so many people that get into a situation though and they begin to shrink from accountability, responsibility and ownership.  It might be hard to interview a person to determine those qualities, but it becomes very easy to judge someone on them. Just as I didn't have to define the words for you to know what they meant, people will evaluate you and will know who you are.

What Do People Outside Your Organization Say About Your Culture?

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Every organization has a culture. Some cultures are very defined, extremely clear to see what it is they stand for. Other cultures are less defined. It might seem there is a clear definition the heart of it is usually just about an organization that is built to feed the ego of the owner or head of the organization. You see this in departments or companies where every person that has a good idea is let go and only those who submit and cater to the leader are allowed to stay. Building a culture is one of the single most important things any organization can do to be successful. A culture is not just what is important to the leader, it is about what is important to the employees and to the customers. Strong cultures exist when all parties understand and support the culture. It is believed at every level, not just at the top. Patrick Lencioni says, "An organization has to institutionalize its culture without bureaucratizing it." This is what so many organizations get wrong. You h

Don't Let A Bad Day Turn You Into A Bad Person

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The topic of grace has been discussed recently in our house. Came about because in discussing different scenarios our girls have been in they see people they know acting differently.  We as humans are complex and each interaction we have can be impacted by what happened before. Think of the times you've had a bad day at work and then you yell at your kids or spouse for something trivial, certainly not something worth getting upset about. Those moments are what each of us experience. So when you are on the receiving end of it you have to ask yourself if this is a normal behavior or abnormal? If this is unusual behavior that is where grace comes in. You don't know what other hardships someone is going through causing them to behaving in a different way. Just as important though is to understand when you are having a bad day, it doesn't give you freedom to treat others poorly. We need to have the self awareness to realize that something in our situation is causing us to not ac

We Are Warriors

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I love this quote from Tim Tebow: I believe that sometimes God gives His toughest assignments to His greatest warriors. — Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) October 26, 2020 It makes me think of all of the kids that face medical issues, attacking them with courage and strength while remaining more joyful than those that have no real issues to complain about. It makes me think of the people who struggle through losing a job and finding a way to provide for their family. Sacrificing, working 2 or 3 jobs to supply what their kids need to succeed. I think of so many people who struggle with things we have no idea about. We all have challenges and battles that we have to face in life. But we are warriors and you have the strength to take on the assignments that you are facing. 

Change Is Inevitable

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As my kids are getting older it is fun to have more adult conversations with them. My oldest and I were talking recently about COVID and the mandate to wear a mask. She was saying how it was hard to understand why there are so many people that refuse to wear one. For her, she thinks that the longer that it goes on and the more she wears one, the less you even notice it. In the beginning it was weird and different, but time and routine have a way of making the weird and different into something normal, something you don't even notice. Throughout history, and in each of our lives, changes come along that we find bizarre at first, or just very different, but then we get used to it and we don't even notice it. Technology is a great example of this. The computers used in the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 required a significant sized room to house them. The smart phone that you carry around in your pocket is roughly 100 million times more powerful. We get so used to them we don'

Finding Home

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Last week we took my daughter on her first college visit to the University of Nebraska Lincoln. We had been in Lincoln and on the campus a handful of times the past few years. As we drove around a bit then toured the campus my wife and I both commented how, though we couldn't explain it, Lincoln felt like home.  Thinking about that feeling and the word home. The feeling for me is a sense of serenity and butterflies in the stomach. There is just a sense of joy and peace being in that place. Each of us have places that feel like home to us. It can vary for each person. It could be the place you live now. Many people when they go to the town they grew up in have that feeling of being home. For some they have a dream of one day living in New York, Paris or London. Others have that vacation spot they visit once a year and when they are there it is just like home. As I think of my daughter going off to college and the adventure of life beginning for her, the idea of home becomes more pre

Don't Settle For Having Winners And Losers

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In America we certainly like our sports. The games we watch or play bring out our competitive spirit. We want to win and we want the other team to lose. For most of us we can't play sports so we try to take that competitive spirit into our workplaces, be it a corporation, a government organization or a non-profit. If we aren't winning we are losing. We want to turn everything into a game where there is a clear winner and a clear loser, because that is what we understand the best. It sickens me to watch what is happening in the political arena in our country as we descend further into the black and white of needing to have only one winner. There has always been a difference of opinion and two parties who don't have the same ideology, but it felt like it used to be more about how to take those differences of opinions and find a way to make something work that everyone can agree on. You can't watch a debate or political ad, read a news article or the latest social media po

Spend Your Energy On Moving Forward, Not Looking Back

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The mind is a tremendous tool that can be of great benefit to us and it can be a hindrance at times also. We can overthink, overanalyze and become hyper-focused on topics that don't provide a lot of value. We all have a tendency to focus on a topic and dwell on it much longer than is needed. If we are thinking about it there is some value, there is a level of importance, but after a while the additional time and energy spent focused on it doesn't add any more value and actually becomes a problem.  I see it in projects at work, when things start going off the path where we need them to be we talk a lot about how things got off course, who is to blame and how it isn't our fault. There is some benefit in figuring out where things went wrong to make sure it doesn't happen again. However more energy needs to be put in how do we move forward and get where we need to. Post mortems are a good thing until they deteriorate into a whining and complaining session.  Learn from the p

How Much Do We Really Appreciate Our Refrigerator?

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Have you ever realized how much food fits in your refrigerator? It is a lot. I needed to make a repair on our fridge that required defrosting it as there was a heat component that needed to be replaced. For the few days leading up to it my family was lectured how they had to eat something from the fridge any time they were hungry. The day before I was going to start the repair, for lunch I did my part by having the left over chili, a small amount of mac & cheese, a single taco with the left over meet from taco night, a container of yogurt and a slice of cheesecake for dessert. It was my own customized 5 course meal. So I did my part and our fridge had never been so empty. I then gathered every cooler I could find in my house, used all of the ice and ice packs I could find and used freeze pops to help keep things cold knowing they would refreeze just fine.  I was amazed at how much stuff we still had in the fridge even being as empty as it had ever been in the last decade. All I tho

Never Forward Until The Kings And Subjects Unite

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Centuries ago generally the government was handled by a king of some sort. The king had territory and all who lived within it were subject to the king. If you had a good king things could be pretty good, if you had a bad king things could get ugly.  If you were the king life was great. Servants took care of your every need, you had riches and castles to live in. If you were a subject, you would have to answer the kings call when needed. If the king decided he wanted to attack his neighbor to try to expand his land, then you would have to go to war for him. If you survived and were victorious your prize was basically getting to return home to your family. The ages of kings is mostly gone now because as time has gone on it became pretty clear that society and civilization doesn't progress unless everyone is able to progress. If the king is the only person that can see improvement in their standing the only way to move up is to kill the king. But there can still only be one. There is

Are You Feeling Burned Out?

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In these crazy times I've started hearing stories about how people are becoming burned out. It seems like as many companies are struggling and laying people off, those that are surviving, or even thriving are hesitant to add staff because the future is so unknown. The financial outlook of their company is stable at the moment but every day feels like the bottom could drop.  If you are an employee, you know what is going on in the world. Many people are losing their jobs or taking pay cuts with unemployment rates still very high. You don't want to rock the boat. You like your job and you certainly don't want to lose it so a little more work expected of you is accepted based on the comparison to the alternative.  As I was thinking about burnout and doing some reading I came across this quote by Marissa Mayer where she said burnout is really about resentment. How right that is. If you've ever felt burned out, or having that feeling of wanting to find something new or diffe

Who Is The Good Guy In The Karate Kid?

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If you grew up in the 80's like I did you are familiar with The Karate Kid . I was bullied in school and it is one of those films that inspired me. I thought I could find a way to stand up to the bullies, win the heart of the girl and be the champion at the end. I, like everyone cheered for Daniel LaRusso because he was the hero and Johnny Lawrence was the villain. But was it true, or was it just the story from Daniel's point of view? The tale of Daniel and Johnny has resurfaced recently. Their resurgence is thanks to a show called Cobra Kai  whose first two seasons moved to Netflix, with a third set to air in 2021. The show is outstanding. There are some great nostalgic references to the 80's, but what makes it really great is how you see things from both Daniel and Johnny's perspective. You spend the entire show trying to figure out who the good guy is and who the bad guy is. You see both of them make mistakes, say things they want to take back and make both poor and

When Weird Becomes The New Normal

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I freely admit the word weird has been used to describe me, many different times in my life. I've been okay with the fact I'm not like everyone else for a very long time. Here is an example. Early in our relationship, my wife and I would be walking in a public place and I would pretend to fall down. For absolutely no reason other than to embarrass her. I did some theater in my life and had an unusual amount of stage combat and stage falling training. I figured the best way to use these skills was in such a way as falling down in a public place. I'm still really surprised some days she never broke up with me. I don't randomly fall in public places anymore, but it persists. My kids understand it. When one of my daughters asks me why I'm being weird before I can answer one of her sisters will say, "That's just how dad is." I always thought part of what I can offer this world is some wit and humor to make even the most boring situations a little more fun.

What Do Others Feelings Mean To You?

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In my last post I talked about controlling your thinking. Very internally focused. However too often we get focused on others. Not only what they are thinking but what they are feeling. When someone doesn't think like we do, we want to change their thinking. We want to tell people not to feel what their are feeling. Neither actually works. You can't control what people think and what they feel. The only thing we can do is understand them and build a relationship with them. If we have a relationship and care about that relationship we will work to understand what they think and how they feel. We see it too often in our world, nobody cares about what someone else feels, and we are surprised when there are tensions stemming from it. Sides are chosen and the war to change the other persons thoughts and feelings begins...and never ends. Not until one side chooses to understand the other. When the choice of peace and unity becomes stronger than the choice of war and division. 

Reduce Stress By Controlling Your Thinking

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It is easy to get lost in our thoughts. Dwell on a topic, over-analyze it, and let it consume our thoughts. While there is some respect for focus, dwelling on things we shouldn't can be harmful. The ability to control our thoughts, control what we are thinking about can go a long way to making us happier and more productive. Controlling your thoughts is harder than it seems. The more we tell ourselves to stop thinking about something, it causes us to think about it more. You are focused on what you don't want to think about, and you get caught in a spiral. The only way to break out of it is to find something to take your mind off of things. Find a different task to work on. Take up a hobby that focuses your mind. Pick up a book or watch a movie. All great things to cause you to escape what you were thinking about. When we dwell on an item it causes a level of stress that none of us need. We need to find ways to recognize when we are dwelling on something we don't need to so

New School Year, New Challenges, New Opportunities To Adapt

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School is starting up for us in Minnesota finally. It is a strange feeling because it is all so new. It has been 6 months since my kids have been in a classroom. Of course it feels strange. Plus the model now looks very different than the survive to the end of the school year we faced in the spring. Teachers have even told us as much. Add into it the complexities of our three kids, in three different buildings, following three completely different models. One is doing a rotation of 2 days in school 4 days at home. Another is doing half of her days in school and half at home. My youngest is going every day but it is a shortened day. They all have contingency plans if there is an outbreak or a mandate to switch to all distance learning. Add in new protocols for cleaning, eating lunch in your classroom, and teachers rotating not the students.  My kids are going to have a number of things to adjust to this year, it will be strange and hard at first, but I have no doubt they will do just fi

How We Disagree Is The Indicator Of Our Ability To Move Forward

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I saw a short video recently from Charles Stanley in 1985 ( link ) that I think is tremendously relevant for today. He talked about how within the organization he was addressing there would be disagreements. From those disagreements, what would show the most as people looked into what transpired at their convention was how they disagreed.  In our organizations, schools, cities, workplaces, states, countries and in the world, we are going to have disagreements. How do we treat someone we disagree with? Just because you don't agree with someone doesn't mean they are evil. Just because someone has a different opinion doesn't mean there isn't something you can learn from them.  How do you disagree with someone? Is it with yelling, taunting and degrading? Or is it with compassion, empathy and patience? It is impossible to move forward when you are playing tug-of-war. The first start in us pulling in the same direction it all about how we treat those we disagree with.

What Excites You?

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I was thinking about the word excited recently and how things can seem unexciting and routine lately. We have our routines, get done the things we need to, but is any of it exciting? Probably not. So what does excite you? What gives you energy? What motivates you? What do you look forward to? If we don't have something that is exciting, if we are just going through the motions in our same boring routine, aren't we just wasting our lives? Fear plays a part because the things that excite us are usually the things that require the most courage. The best example of this is when I met my wife. I realized this was a person I wanted to know more, to date and eventually ask to marry me. Of course it was exciting, and definitely scary. Your heart starts racing, palms get sweaty, wondering how she feels. Scared to put yourself out there for fear of being rejected, wanting to do it anyway because there is just something about her.  Too often we listed to the fear, and we rein ourselves in

It Isn't The Idea, It Is The Execution

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You ever see a new business open, or a new product that is on the market, and they are the hottest thing? Everyone is buying and talking about it and you start telling all of your friends how you had the idea already? You go to bed every night kicking yourself about how you didn't act on your idea earlier and what it could mean for you if you had. Everyone is looking for the million dollar idea. You see something created and wonder why you couldn't come up with it yourself. The funny thing is it isn't the idea as much as it is the ability to act on it. Most ideas are generally available. Go on the Internet and a quick search will likely get you to the companies who already do what you are thinking of. That doesn't mean to abandon your idea, you just have to figure out how to execute in spite of the competition. Stealing ideas is easy, stealing the execution of an idea is impossible. Similarly, as an individual nobody can steal your effort, preparation and drive. It migh

Rest, Recovery and Rejuvenation

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When we told my 7 year old we would be going home the next day from our vacation, she didn't want to go. She just wanted to stay longer. It is fun to get away, take time to visit somewhere new, learn new things, see interesting sights, and learn some history. But few of us can afford to be on vacation our entire lives. We need time to rest and step away from our normal lives to rejuvenate. But the vacation comes to an end and it is time to get back to work. A day of rest now and then is a good thing. The Bible was clear in explaining that you should work for 6 days and rest on the 7th. There is a lot of wisdom in allowing our body and mind to recuperate. It is something we don't often do. Sure most of us only work 5 days a week, but we are running kids all weekend to activities, have house work and yard work to do, pay bills, and countless other errands and tasks needed. In our fast paced world we go all the time, and don't stop. We wonder why we burn out, have high stress

Enjoying The Black Hills, Though They Were Stolen

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My family recently took a vacation to the Black Hills in South Dakota. It is an area with lots to see and do, beautiful scenery and a rich history. Of course there is Mount Rushmore, which is an inspiring place if you are interested in the founding fathers of our country. Then there is Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickok was killed and is burred.  The real history which ties these two things together, what nobody wants to talk about, is how we stole this land from the Native Americans for whom the Black Hills are sacred. There was a treaty signed by the US Government that defined the borders and gave the Black Hills to the Sioux tribe in 1868. However the discovery of gold less than 10 years later caused the US to break the treaty and push them from their land. Around 50 years later, an idea was formed to carve a statue into a mountain to promote tourism in the area. It worked, as I spend my money to support these elements.  I can't help but wonder what our nation would look like if w

Extreme Listening

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Listened to a great podcast recently on Simon Sinek's A Bit of Optimism. Sinek interviewed filmmaker Deeyah Kahn. The topic of conversation was Extreme Listening , which sounds like an unusual term, but when you hear Deeyah tell her stories it makes sense. Deeyah is a Muslim and made a film called  White Right: Meeting the Enemy. The documentary is about her spending time with white supremacists. Her work is all centered around people most of us would consider horrible human beings that you would never want to come into contact with. But listening to her tell the stories and how she got to know these people, it really made me think about how much we don't like to listen to others. It is where Sinek came up with such a great concept as extreme listening.  We argue and debate by trying to convince everyone why I am right and my opponent is wrong. It puts all of the focus on me, my opinion, why my way is better. That isn't how you change peoples opinion. Deeyah Kahn was able t

Why Does A Vacation Not Feel Like A Vacation?

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I am taking a vacation soon. It has been two years since I took an actual vacation. I take time off, but it is a day here and there, extended weekends, dance competitions, dance competition recovery days, the basics. But not a real full week off going somewhere. I'm excited. I'm also stressed about it. Why is taking a longer vacation so hard? You have your normal work and craziness you deal with all of the time, then you add on top of it the planning and prepping you have to do with work to make sure everything is set for the week you will be out. We won't talk about the flood of emails and chaos you will come back to. Then you also have the planning, packing and checklists to make sure you have everything you need for the vacation itself.  I think I need a new goal of always being prepared to take a week off. What does that look like to not have things so piled up you can step away for a few days and not have anything miss a beat? For most businesses that would indicate yo

Do You Want To Solve Your Problem Or Figure Out How To Live With It?

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When it comes to problem solving, the challenge is we generally start from a place of what we know. Perhaps we have been doing something in our company for a long time but now growth or some other change has increased the demand on the old way of doing it. Or maybe you've been able to deal with your kid in a certain way but then they get older and their friends change and they have different ideas that has to change how you interact with them.  We deal with problems and most of the time problems come about from some sort of change. If things happened the same way it would be easy to figure out how to manage your problems, find solutions that fix them and get things humming. The hard part is just when you think you have a problem solved something else changes and a new problem comes along. My wife and I have joked for years how every time we start to feel like we have this parenting thing down our kids grow out of one stage and into another. I mean you can try to parent a teenager t

The Number One Task Of A Leader Is To Provide Clarity

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We all know that some times leaders don't have all of the answers. Each of us have been in situations where you basically feel like you are making it up as you go. You might be in one of those situations now, especially with how crazy and constantly changing this year is. With the health in our country the way it is we are probably dealing with a lot more work absences this year. Maybe you are a manager or a small business owner and you have an employee who you don't know when, or even if they are going to return. You have customers and co-workers that are relying on that person. You can't be certain of how things are going to transpire, but you have to make an effort to provide some clarity. If you don't that is when the rumors get started and frustrations come out as people talk and try to make sense of it. When people have no information from leaders it creates a vacuum which is quickly filled with whatever people can conjure up. I think one of the main qualities of

Making An Impact By Observing

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With my job there are at times late night calls to execute a change to minimize the impact if something goes wrong. One of the benefits of this is you can learn some new and interesting things as you are talking with people outside of normal hours. This week I learned about something called the Observer Effect which is my new favorite concept. The Observer Effect is a theory in physics that by simply observing a phenomenon you are impacting the phenomenon. A great example of this is checking the air pressure in your tires. When you check the air pressure you let some of the air out in the process to get the reading of the air pressure. It is a miniscule amount but it is there none the less.  If you want to see this effect in real life, pick a friend or spouse and observe them. Don't say anything, just sit down with a pen and paper and take notes about what you observe. I guarantee that you you will have an impact on them, simply from your observation.  The reason I love this concep

There Are Times The Smart Thing To Do Is Work Harder

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The old saying telling us we should work smarter not harder is great, and we all want to do so whenever we can. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense to. For instance, I've been doing some landscaping, and that has required a lot of digging and hauling of decorative rock. Now, that whole process would have gone a lot faster if I had a skid loader. But if you look at the time it would take to be proficient to dig up what I wanted to and not hit what I didn't, it might not have actually saved that much time overall. Plus there is the cost to rent the machine and the risk of actually hitting something by accident and causing more work.  So sometimes you just have to pick up a shovel and start scooping.  There are lots of tasks that require hard work to get done. There are better and smarter ways, but we don't always have the luxury of being able to develop the skills needed to operate at a more efficient level. So we do the work, learn our lessons and prepare ourselves for

Surviving The Day Is Also A Victory

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Tough situations happen. Work gets crazy. Kids schedules get hectic. You figure your only options are to figure out how to clone yourself, invent a time machine or give up and sit in the corner crying.  The actual solution is to get through it. Sometimes we just get through it, barely, and that is okay. One step in front of the other. Being able to say you got through another day is a victory. Celebrate that as a small victory and sooner than you think a big victory will come along.

The Lost Art Of Thinking Before Speaking

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I wonder what it was really like during World War II in our country. Reading the history I know that most Americans opposed entry into the war until the attack on Pearl Harbor. Even after we were drawn into the war there were groups of people that opposed the war thinking Nazism was preferable to Communism as well as other more racist stances. Amidst all of that the overwhelming stories handed down were about the Greatest Generation and how everyone did their part, no matter how small, to support the war effort. Everyone knew that sacrifices had to be made, even the sacrifice of so many lives. I think about that generation, trying to understand how in 80 years it has become hard to find a similar spirit of unity. We are a divided country and I see no desire on either side to try to reconcile. The concept of evaluating the words you say before you say them has been lost with the anonymity of social media. Asking ourselves, "Is it helpful? Is it kind?" before speaking to someon

If You Have Free Time Prepare For The Unknown

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One of the great questions out right now is what school is going to look like in the fall. There are still a lot of unknowns around COVID-19 and what the right decision is. Education, mental health, social growth, nutritional well being are all factors that need to be weighed along with the health risks of the virus.  Parents know the end of the school year was not great. It was pure survival mode for everyone, trying to make the best of a situation we were thrown into. There has been a lot of grief given to teachers and administrators expecting a rock solid plan as we approach heading back to school, which is too bad. The problem is there is still a number of options on how it would look. Each option would require a different structure and game plan for teachers. They need to prepare for all of the scenarios, and also the possibility of having to switch to a plan B over the weekend multiple times throughout the year.  It reminded me of how hard it is to plan. We all get thrown into si

Maintaining The Status Quo

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One of my favorite movies is National Treasure . I am a history fan and enjoy stories that involve solving a puzzle so it is right up my alley. Towards the end of the movie as the cat and mouse game with the bad guys comes to its climax there are a few lines about maintaining the status quo that have always stuck with me. The good guys and bad guys are working together because they both have a piece of the puzzle.  Patrick: Look, cooperation only lasts as long as the status quo remains unchanged. As soon as this guy gets where this thing ends, he won't need you anymore. Or any of us. Ben: So we find a way to make sure the status quo changes in our favor. Status quo is a Latin phrase meaning the existing state of affairs. This idea of maintaining the status quo to retain your position, or your bargaining power is all to common. Individuals want to maintain everything  they currently have and expect in a negotiation the other side concede to their wishes. Of course the other side is

The Energy You Give In Every Interaction

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Most of your interactions with people generally go in one of two ways, those that give you energy and those that suck the energy right out of you. The same person might do both depending on the circumstances. Anyone that is a parent knows this because there are times that your kids just lift you up and bring you so much joy. There are those times though they drive you to the point of demanding that your spouse find a babysitter for the night before you lose your mind. This is likely the case at work or school also where there are those people we struggle to be around when they get in a mood.  Have you ever wondered what type of a person you are to other people? When you are talking with someone and the conversation has you energized and motivated, have you ever wondered if the other person feels the same way? Communication is more than just the words we say. You can tell by someone's tone and their responses if they just want the conversation to be over with.  We have to remember t

When You Have A Chance To Make Someone's Day - Do It

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There are a lot of things going on in the world that can bring a person down. If you took a poll of everyone and had them rank on a scale of 1 to 10 how good they feel life is at the moment, what do you think the average would be? Lower than any of us would like it I'm sure. You see things opening back up, the talk of sports finding ways to return and seeing more people out and about. It is a good thing but then we hear the rise of more cases and the unknowns of what we are truly dealing with.  It feels gloomy right now. Like you are either waiting for a rain storm or it starting to lighten up. Off in the distance you can see sunshine trying to peak through and you wonder which way the wind is blowing. Does the future bring sunshine or more storms?  It is hard to find the sun at times, so we need to be the sunshine in each others lives. Little gestures, to make someone smile is that first ray of sun poking through on a rainy day. We need to ask ourselves every day, with every perso