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Thursday is Thanksgiving so I thought I’d offer up a few inspirational, feel good comments to share with the people in your life; without specific attribution chalk them up to societal wisdom, better know as Anon.

Be content with your surroundings but not with yourself till you have made the most of them. Very true, and to that end it’s good to remember that there is no danger of developing eyestrain from looking on the bright side of things.

Florence Nightingale was an amazing woman and the advice she offers reflects who she was, “Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift—there is nothing small about it.”

Sowing, for those unfamiliar with the term, refers to planting something. Samuel Smiles offers a more detailed cause and effect for what you sow in your life, but be wise, it’s your choice whether you sow positives or negatives.

“Sow a thought and you reap and act.
Sow an act and you reap a habit.
Sow a habit and you reap a character.
Sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

Carl Sandburg understood that life is full or ups and downs, but he (of course) put it more elegantly than that, “Life is like an onion: you peel off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep.”

We choose how we live; we choose not only what we take out of the world, but what we put into it. Knowing that, you could do far worse than to follow the lead of Sydney Smith, “When you rise in the morning, form a resolutions to make the day a happy one to a fellow creature.

Sowing positives and forming resolutions that help others helps you find the miracles in life. As Helen Keller said, When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

This year find time during the holiday season to reflect—on your relationships, your work, your plans and yourself—and do it with these words foremost in your mind, There will never be another now—I’ll make the most of today. There will never be another me—I’ll make the most of myself.

Stock.xchng image credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/921440

I don’t have kids, but I have a great interest in education, because I will live out my life in a world run by Millennials and younger. To some extent that is a scary thought, but there are plenty of aMillennials out there, too.

Let’s take a look at the worst idea in higher education—for-profit colleges or perhaps I should say for-profit rip-offs. I first wrote about them April 1, without even noticing the irony of the date, and thought I would share a couple of up-dates today.

There is a perception that operators of for-profit education are devoid of real credibility, but unfortunately, that isn’t true. Kaplan isn’t the largest of the for-profit operators, but its high-profile owner gives it enormous credibility—it is owned by the Washington Post. And the Post is going all out to prevent any kind of regulation or accreditation. Kaplan and the Post and spent $350,000 on lobbying in the third quarter of this year and Chairman Donald Graham is personally lobbying lawmakers.

But over the last few months, Kaplan and other for-profit education companies have come under intense scrutiny from Congress, amid growing concerns that the industry leaves too many students mired in debt, and with credentials that provide little help in finding jobs.

College tuition is going up, student debt is going up and college presidents’ salaries are going up. What do you think? Are they worth their money? (The public survey is coming soon.)

Thirty presidents of private colleges each earned more than $1 million in total compensation in 2008, up from 23 the previous year, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual salary report.

Last month I told you about a trend for teachers to run schools and the difference it is making.

Here is the story of another school turned around by its teachers.

Test scores are up 18 percent and enrollment has spiked more than 30 percent. The model works, teachers say, because everyone from the principal to the janitor is vested in the outcome. “Everybody has a stake,” said teacher Bruce Newborn. “We all suffer and we all win.”

If you are looking for a different TV show check out School Pride on NBC. Think Extreme Makeover, Home Edition, but for US schools. The schools will make you angry, ill or cry and then lift you up and amaze you. It’s on Friday night at 8 pm Pacific time.

Finally, Bullying is on the upswing and, as everyone knows, empathy is sadly lacking in kids. Enter Roots of Empathy, an educational organization that uses babies to teach empathy to kids.

Since then, Roots has worked with more than 12,600 classes across Canada, and in recent years, the program has expanded to the Isle of Man, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States, where it currently operates in Seattle. Researchers have found that the program increases kindness and acceptance of others and decreases negative aggression.

Be sure to join me Monday to learn how entrepreneurs are taking bullying in the adult world and turning it into a business, much like they did with leadership.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedroelcarvalho/2812091311/

Every year I spend time with clients helping them understand the kind of planning they need to do now in order to be on the road to success the following year; I also like to share an outline of the process with you.

You have to have a plan
Anyone leading a company, even a company of one, needs to know

• what you want to do, and
• how you’re going to do it.

This brings you to the crux of the matter—how do you plan for a sustainable business?

Choose your approach

• SOP (seat of the pants): Used frequently throughout business history, and extensively in the late Nineties. The CEO (top dog) discusses her desires over lunch with other (hopefully) senior staff members. Separately, each manager prepares a budget, including headcount for his department based on
  • what he thinks is needed to accomplish what the head honcho says she wants and
  • increasing his own leverage within the company (although these two are frequently reversed).

• PBO (operating plan w/budgets and objectives): Requires more thought and effort, but is the approach of choice for well-run companies. It requires the
  • creation of a viable operating plan to achieve the objectives; and a
  • detailed budget by which to implement it.

SOP, in all its glorious variations, spells chaos (which can be accomplished with no help from me), so we’ll focus on PBO.

What’s PBO?

Three interlocked pieces—each critical to success.

1. A budget that states

• how much is available to spend during the upcoming year and
• who is responsible for spending it.

2. The specific objectives that the company needs to accomplish during the year,

• financial, e.g.,
  • increase revenues 10%
  • increase services to 25% of revenues; and the
• quantified managerial, e.g.,
  • raise productivity 8%
  • reduce turnover 15%

3. A description of how the company plans to achieve the objectives in order to move forward on accomplishing the company’s long-term twin goals of profitability and success.

The end result is a detailed business roadmap for the coming year.

Where’s the rocket science?
The three parts are interrelated and must be tightly linked, so changing one affects all.

That’s it. Simple, right? Unfortunately, many executives treat them as separate entities wreaking havoc on their subordinates. They don’t get, or don’t care, that it’s a domino effect and that when one changes they all must change.

Which are you?

• The boss who can’t be bothered to do the hard work and make the tough decisions and doesn’t worry about jerking his people around because ‘they’ll get over it’; or
• the boss who believes that with a good plan, known objectives and a viable budget all the managers—executives to the lowliest supervisor—will buy-in and execute intelligently throughout the year?

As always, it’s your choice.

Image credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/914885

It takes years to build a brand into a leader; years of adherence to stated values and grueling work building trust.

And that is what the Better Business Bureau did for nearly 100 years.

It takes far less time to destroy or, at the least, badly damage a leadership brand.

And that is what the BBB has done; apparently for money.

Both Friday night’s ABC program and Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal’s attack focused on the two-year-old BBB marketing tool to assign letter grades ranging from the low of F to the top A+ rating to hundreds of thousands of businesses.

The marketing tool that is destroying the BBB isn’t sophisticated or subtle—more a case of grades for money.

Old story; buy a membership and raise your grade.

The scheme wasn’t universally popular, but the leadership had the leverage.

Some bureaus also had questions about the plan – developed and tested in the southern California chapter – and refused to follow it. The five chapters finally got with the program after the council threatened to expel them.

The result is betrayal, betrayal of the consumers who trust the ratings, of companies that work hard for good grades and the employees who just work hard.

Pressure; that is what leadership uses when it wants to have its own way, whether the leadership is an organization or an individual. And the leadership always knows exactly what kind of pressure to apply.

What do you do when your leadership starts applying pressure?

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31019817@N02/3254784742/

Image credit: FailBlog

Not every soil can bear all things.

–Virgil

Virgil’s wise words have deep meaning when it comes to hiring.

Typically, managers interview for skills and experience that are similar to what the person will be doing in their new job.

Yet none of that information really predicts success.

If the culture of past company and the style of the candidate’s direct manager aren’t synergistic at the new company or with that particular hiring manager success may be ephemeral.

Like plants, different people need different growing conditions—soil, acidity, moisture, light—in order to thrive and grow.

It is the responsibility of the hiring manager, not HR or another manager, to determine if the soil is right for a particular candidate and, if not, can it be conditioned to support that person’s success.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedbee/103147140/

Do you ever give thought to your personal prejudices? Not the race, creed, color, gender orientation prejudices, but all those prejudices and predilections that predispose you to think and respond a certain way—sometimes they are even one in the same.

My most annoying prejudice/predilection, and the one that has brought me the most grief, stems from my hearing—or should I say my lack of hearing.

I hear the sound of voices, but I have difficulty turning those sounds into understandable speech. This is exacerbated by the speed at which people speak and the lack of good diction. In other words, to my hearing, people talk very fast and mumble.

Because of that I tend to latch on to those I can hear, cutting them too much slack, rationalizing the red flags and, worst of all, trusting them because I can hear/understand them.

Stupid, but I’ve fallen into that trap more times than I can count and it has cost me time, money and pain.

My solution has been to build up an ultra conscious sensitivity to people’s speech patterns; it doesn’t necessarily stop my mad rush, but at least I’m conscious of the risk.

By the same token, that awareness keeps me from passing people by who have great value, but are difficult to hear.

Whether you call them prejudices or not, you would be wise to build your awareness of them. Even the piddily little ones can keep you from hiring great people, finding the love of your life and moving forward on dozens of other fronts without your even realizing it.

So try taking a step back, watch yourself as you go about your life; actively listen to what you say and think about why you said it. Recognize your auto responses; know what immediately puts you at ease, like my hearing, and consider how much that influences your attitude.

Yes, it’s work, but, as with any kind of work, when it’s done well, the payoff more than rewards the effort on so many levels.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/688571884/

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Lady Nancy Astor was a Viscountess and the first woman to sit in the British House of Commons. In her 85 years, 1879 to 1964, she saw changes on a global level that rival anything we’ve seen since.

Let’s start with her more serious side.

First, a viable summary of the attitude that permeates both politicians and voters these days.

“The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything or nothing.”

If you buy into her definition of education, you may start wondering exactly what young people are learning at our colleges and universities.

“Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.”

Based on this, almost no one on Wall Street could be considered educated.

“The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.”

And if hopes, fears and wishes don’t cut it, there are always hates, prejudices, and ideology—anything to avoid thinking.

On the lighter side, Lady Astor had some interesting commentary on the media, women and herself.

Looks like things haven’t changed much in more than 45 years, although she says “newspapers” the comment is just as appropriate for new media as any of the old.

“From the American newspapers, you’d think America was populated by naked women and cinema stars”

I love this one, because it reminds me of my youth. I was the person everyone else called the day after to find out if they had a good time; I knew I did.

“One reason why I don’t drink is because I wish to know when I am having a good time.”

Remember a couple of years ago at the height of the financial meltdown, Iceland suggested that if women had been in charge it wouldn’t have happened? I don’t agree, but I did get a kick out of Astor’s view of things.

“Women have got to make the world safe for men since men have made it so darned unsafe for women.”

Finally, on a very personal level, the Lady deals with the sensitive subject of age.

“I refuse to admit that I am more than 52, even if that makes my children illegitimate.”

Some things never change.

Image credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ladyastor.jpg