“If you act like your wedding day is the greatest moment in your life, it’s all downhill from there.” –Elizabeth Johnson
What looks like a throw-away line actually packs a lot of wisdom.
Any moment you consider the greatest moment of your life sets up the same downhill scenario.
If your college graduation is greatest, what comes next?
If you consider the founding of your company, product launch, revenue or even profitability the greatest day of your life what will its acquisition or IPO be?
If the birth of your children rates as the greatest, what will their graduation, marriage, and their children’s births be?
Instead of setting up a downhill move from your life highlights, you can open the future to more just by removing the ‘est’.
If they are ‘great’ moments instead of ‘greatest’ then you are setting your self up for ‘greater’ moments.
Isn’t that a better life scenario?
It is only when you are dying that you can choose the ‘est’ in retrospect.
And I’m willing to bet that you will be hard-pressed to choose just one.
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Since the mid-80s when Semler arrived on the scene, that has meant an ever-evolving experiment in upending the organizational status quo: no organizational chart, no fixed offices or working hours, no fixed CEO, no HR department, no five-year plan (or two- or one-year-plan), no job descriptions or permanent positions, no approvals necessary—and an endless array of clever practices and initiatives to increase individual autonomy and agency, participation at every level, trust, and informality.
The result? Market success—Semco is private but Semler reports average annual revenue growth at 40% and profitability. (…)
“We constantly talk about passion—serving customers passionately, filling in forms passionately—but what if we created the conditions for people to feel exhilaration, to get involved to the point they shout ‘yes!’ and give each other high fives because they did it their way and it worked?”
Would your people thrive in a going concern that functions more like a startup than most startups?
If yes, why? If not, why not?
Knowing why it would/does work is useful because you can share the knowledge and lessons learned with others.
If you don’t believe similar actions, tweaked for your organization, would work you need to ask why not.
You can ask your peers or, better yet your people, but first ask the mirror.
“In many ways, it’s not my generation’s fault that Japan has so much debt,” he said. “But blaming others won’t get us anywhere. We just need to find a way forward. It’s the responsibility of all of us born into this age.” –31 year old Naomichi Suzuki, the youngest mayor of the country’s most rapidly aging city.
You could do much worse than incorporate Naomichi Suzuki’s attitude into your company culture, life and as an integral part of your MAP.
Organizations and individuals spend inordinate amounts of time and energy assigning blame and indulging in recriminations.
At times it seems they want apologies more than solutions.
Look not just around you, but also in the mirror, and you’ll find at least one such active situation (say thanks if it’s only one).
Assigning fault is necessary in certain circumstances, usually when specific legal and societal laws are broken by specific, identifiable individuals.
Assigning responsibility is most productive when used as a learning experience, again for specific, identifiable individuals.
Solutions that move the situation forward are where time, energy and resources should be focused, but for some it’s more about them than solving the problem.
“Supporters of the defeated Ms. Iijima [the losing candidate] dominate the city council, blocking proposals and hurling criticism at the young mayor.”
The question all individuals must answer for themselves is what’s most important,
…a phenomenon that’s been identified by Edward de Bono, the legendary creative thinker. He calls it the “creative pause.” (…)The creative pause allows the space for your mind to drift, to imagine and to shift, opening it up to new ways of seeing.
From HBS’ Jim Heskett’s research question on deep thinking to my own comments on the value of silence, the need for undistracted time and the resulting creativity is well documented.
To be or not to be distracted is an individual free choice and can’t be dictated by others, but it is always wise to look at the consequences of one’s chosen actions.
Distracted driving kills people.
Distracted thinking kills creativity and innovation.
It comes with the impeccable credentials of TED and is called, rightly so, TED-Ed.
It’s a link to a world for you to explore with your kids and other learning-oriented friends.
It’s one of those links that you should blast out to everyone in each of your networks and Tweet so the world will know.
“Our goal here is to offer teachers free tools in a way they will find empowering,” said TED Curator Chris Anderson, on the new TED Ed site. “This new platform allows them to take any useful educational video, not just TED’s, and easily create a customized lesson plan around it. Great teaching skills are never displaced by technology. On the contrary, they’re amplified by it. That’s our purpose here: to give teachers an exciting new way to extend learning beyond classroom hours.”
Yes, it’s a fantastic tool for actual teachers (send those you know the link), but, in the end, we are all teachers and learners.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the list, the concepts are good, but there is a lot wrong with the accompanying commentary starting with the adjectives.
According to the article bosses who don’t embrace these eight in the way described are average bosses.
More accurately, the descriptions of the actions and attitudes attributed to the “average boss” belong, by and large, to the toxic boss category.
Based on the categories Jobs is average, by the descriptions he’s toxic.
Tony Hsieh comes to mind as fitting the description of ‘extraordinary’, although I doubt you would hear him describe himself that way.
Apple and Zappos are both highly successful.
The take-away is nothing is black and white; things that look great at first glance need to be thought through before you embrace them.
Option Sanity™ helps think things through.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system. It’s so easy a CEO can do it.
Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.
We all know that things are not always as they seem and people certainly aren’t.
Brilliant ideas can come from any individual and are not dependent on their level or even their expertise.
By the same token, investors that sound great may not be, while those who are off-putting could be your salvation.
There are no hard and fast rules for evaluating whether what you see is what you’ll get, because each case is different—but that doesn’t matter.
The important thing to remember is that most stuff and people come with multiple layers and they may not be what they seem.
So while I can’t offer a multipurpose evaluation tool I can provide you with an unforgettable visual to remind you to look past the obvious.
SUBMIT YOUR STORY
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“What they were thinking is beyond me.” –Peter King, House Chairman, Homeland Security Committee, on Meet the Press, 4/22/12
‘What were he/she/they thinking’ seems to be the universal question these days.
Boards ask it about CEOs and other executives.
Managers ask it about employees.
People ask it about their politicians and religious leaders.
Spouses ask it about their each other and their kids.
In short, everybody asks about everybody and no one is exempt as either asker or askee.
Have people really stopped thinking, gotten stupider or is something else going on?
All of the above.
The something else started with tele—telegraph, teletype, telephone, television—and the world shrank as communications sped up.
Attitudes too changed, as captured in the title of The Hombres 1967 hit “Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out).”
Subjects that were covert, if not downright taboo became titillation fodder for the salivating mob—everyday folks who were delighted to learn that feet of clay were as common in self-described role models and “superior” career paths as in their friends and neighbors.
Now communication is instant; not necessarily true, but real-time fast,
(Corrections, however, are problematical, since stuff on the web is uncontrollable and, therefore, for all practical purposes, uncorrectable.)
Were the pre-Boomer generations of secrecy better?
Not really; secrecy opens the door to threats and blackmail (still true today).
How much is too much?
Is it viable to evaluate you now based on your actions at Woodstock, Spring Break or even a drive-in movie when you were 17?
It’s not generational; men and women have raised hell, lied, stolen, cheated and played around since time immemorial and many were/are caught.
But in these days of instant, irretrievable and irrevocable information perhaps it’s time to start thinking about consequences before, instead of being asked “What were you thinking?” after.
I’ve often cited Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers regarding right time/right place luck—often an accident of birth. For example Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Bill Joy and Scott McNealy were all born between 1953 and 1955
Another example of right time/right place is found in Harvard’s MBA class of 1974 as chronicled by Laurence Shames in The Big Time: The Harvard Business School’s Most Successful Class & How It Shaped America, originally published in 1986 and being republished now.
1974 was probably the most successful single group of MBAs ever graduated from any school; further, this class actually did stuff and built things, as opposed to shuffling money around.
But they also worked their tails off. They didn’t expect anything to be handed to them. They always asked for more work, not less. They were a very competitive, driven group. But, again, not only for their own monetary gains. They wanted to excel. They wanted to be leaders.
When the ’49ers graduated, I think there were 653 graduates. Only six guys went to Wall Street –less than one percent of the class. It just wasn’t considered where the action was or considered a place where you could make a meaningful difference.
Learning about that class makes you wonder what happened. Where did the drive for more than money go?
What happened between 1974 and 2008 that so changed the attitude of our best and brightest? Why did money gain primacy as the only thing that matters?
The funny thing is that if you ask the folks who actually are changing our world, such as Larry Page, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or Kevin Systrom, they’ll all say the same thing—they didn’t do it for the money.
I know this sounds like a joke, but it really happened.
The comments below were part of a larger discussion regarding role, responsibilities and expectations.
The discussion was at the request of a boss as a final effort to turn a new hire around before the end of his probationary period.
It takes a lot to get to me, but 40 minutes into the conversation the words I uttered were pure sarcasm.
I said, “The world does not revolve around you.”
His response was real, honest and sincere.
After ten seconds of silence he said, “Oh.”
I said, “You as you are special to your parents, your love and some friends. Beyond that you must earn special status through your actions with each individual you meet and in every new situation throughout your life.”
This time the silence lasted closer to 20 seconds.
“If you act like your wedding day is the greatest moment in your life, it’s all downhill from there.” –Elizabeth Johnson
At times it seems they want apologies more than solutions.
I have only 
Why is it that so many who offer good professional commentary ruin it by presenting it as black and white?
‘What were he/she/they thinking’ seems to be the universal question these days.
I’ve often cited 
I know this sounds like a joke, but it really happened.
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