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I probably shouldn’t say this, but I do get tired of having managers ask, how to get workers to think/do/work “outside-the-box.”

For decades they’ve been exploring a plethora of business books, articles, seminars, coaching, consulting, discussions, etc., on the subject—some good, some not so good—and are still searching for how to lead their workers out of that dreaded box.

I hear, “How do we get the team to think differently?” “What incentives work best?” “How do we engage our people?”

What I don’t hear is “What do I need to change in me [to make it happen]?”

What annoys is the assumption that the solutions all involve changing the staff, environment, compensation and any other external item that might plausibly make a difference—except self.

If you want your people to think/do/work outside-the-box then you need to lead/manage outside-the-box and that usually means changing your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) before you can expect your people to change theirs.

This is rarely what leaders/managers want to hear.

I keep saying it, as do others, but many still don’t get it or just ignore it.

Today I’m saying it again loudly and very publicly:

You (there are no exceptions, none) manage/lead based on the way you think, what you think, how you think, and what you believe—in other words your MAP. No matter what you read, hear or talk, you will always walk your own MAP—that is your authenticity and you can never get away from it.

It’s not enough for you to know, you need to accept this as truth along with the knowledge that any changes are your choice and in your control.

That said, why not adopt RampUp Solutions taglines as your own.

To change what they do, change how you think.

Leadership: outside-the-box/inside your head.

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For those of you too young to know, Simon Wiesenthal was an Austrian-Jewish architectural engineer until the advent of Hitler. He survived three death camps in a four year period and became a world renowned, or reviled depending on your sympathies, Nazi hunter.

Wiesenthal’s words may have their roots in the Holocaust, but they apply equally well to today’s geopolitical situation, as well as more mundane stuff like work. You might think I’m exaggerating, but if you tone down the power of his words you’ll find a reflection of the office bully; the pointy haired manager; and other situations you face on a daily basis.

If you know from history the danger, then part of the danger is over because it may not take you by surprise as it did your ancestors.

Ancestors aside, tracking the historical actions of the people in your world protects you from being taken unaware.

Violence is like a weed – it does not die even in the greatest drought.

There are many kinds of violence and not all of them involve bodily harm; psyches are gossamer; abuse exists in many contexts.

What connects two thousand years of genocide? Too much power in too few hands.

Think this doesn’t apply to business? Think of the lives destroyed by Enron, the banking crisis, Bernard Madoff—there are many kinds of death and the destruction of dreams and hope is a type that often goes unacknowledged.

For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.

True since time began, but good men and women often do nothing in and out of the business world.

Technology without hatred can be a blessing. Technology with hatred is always a disaster.

Technology covers a great deal of ground; in itself it is benign, but, like a car, it can maim and kill when mixed with anger, fear, hate or carelessness.

Freedom is not a gift of heaven, you have to fight for it every day,

Your personal fight is against whatever enslaves or endangers you, no matter the source. Just be sure in fighting that you don’t inflict the same damage on your foes.

Humour is the weapon of unarmed people: it helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them.

And it is humor that wreaks the most havoc on your foes in the business world.

Human rights is the only ideology that deserves to survive,

Ideology has cost our world its peace, prosperity and maybe its future. Ideology eliminates rationality; I honestly believe that the minute people start thinking ‘yours is wrong, mine is right’ the trouble begins—and usually escalates.

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Most of you probably don’t remember, but a while ago I asked readers for help coming up with a new tag line. That was actually the second time I tried tapping my readership for help.

During the time I’ve been mulling your responses and advice (thanks Dave!) my blog was totally redesigned—no more road.

Today, for whatever reason, the tag has been boiling, instead of at a low simmer on the back burner, and what popped into my head was YOUR leadership breakthrough, which, while not terrible, didn’t really light fires, although it goes well with the new design.

I kept re-reading what you all said, especially Dave Crain’s advice, which I knew, but needed to hear again.

I think ultimately, you are the one that needs to come up with the tagline, if you want one. We can give you ideas, maybe even inspiration, but I think the “flash of inspiration” has to come from you. Only you have the passion and the insight uniquely individual to you.

I kept thinking about what I write (and rant) constantly, that leadership isn’t positional; anybody with initiative has the potential to be a ‘leader in the instance’—there when they see the need.

And that’s when it finally happened; I had an epiphany.

YOU + initiative = leadership

What do you think?

As to the winner, although all your input helped and he didn’t come up with the exact phrase, it was Dave’s words that drove me, so I’m declaring him the winner. I hope he enjoys The Three Laws Of Performance.

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Can you sum up your life in just 6 words?

Clare Booth Luce, according to columnist Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, once told President John Kennedy that “a great man is one sentence.” Noonan writes that Lincoln’s life could be summed up as “He preserved the Union and freed the slaves.” –Bloomberg.com

Smith Magazine just published its second collection of six word memoirs by, as they say, “the famous and obscure.” They also continually collect them on their website.

Forcing yourself to boil down your current situation or a specific aspect of it is a great way to bring clarity to often smoky or downright opaque feelings.

I love this idea and would like to invite all of you to post your six word summation in comments. I’ll then create a permanent page in the right-hand column to make it easy to post updates as often as you choose. I’ll start off.

Option Sanity™ success is my future

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What do you do and where do you go when you leave a high-stress career that nearly kills you?

If your name is Tom Dunn and you spent 20 years, first as a defense counsel in the Army Trial Defense Service, then stints in Florida, New York State and most recently as head of the nonprofit Georgia Resource Center, you find a less stressful environment in which to indulge your passion.

You teach in a tough middle school in Atlanta, Georgia where “ninety-three percent of students are black and 5 percent Hispanic; some 97 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch.”

Dunn’s prior experience made him a passionate believer in what Frederick Douglass said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

According to principal, Danielle S. Battle, middle school turns off many teachers because it’s where “students’ bodies and minds are changing, and disparities in learning abilities are playing out.”

Dunn found that amusing, “You can’t be a starry-eyed idealist and do defense work in capital cases for 20 years.”

Dunn is the type of teacher that every parent should want for their child, but, as proved in Dallas, teachers are fired for being good—good meaning tough enough to stick to their guns and require kids to learn.

We need more teachers like Dunn; teachers who care and environment that supports their efforts to educate.

But the kids complain to their parents, the parents complain to the school board and the teacher is out—no matter how good the test scores. So tying teacher pay to test scores may not help if the choice is between less money and no job.

What are line managers, AKA principals and teachers, supposed to do when the executive team, AKA, school district board, first gives tacit approval to shipping shoddy products and then formalizes the practice through its work rules and quality processes?

How stupid is it to tie funding to students staying in school and passing and then allow the bar to be lowered in order to achieve the goal?

Does the ability to pass tests accurately reflect an ability to think?

Kids are smart; they know when the system is gamed and how to leverage their power.

Who is in charge here?

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Friday I explained how the Philosophy of ER can help you lead a more satisfying life and achieve more of your goals, especially the big ones. Today I want to share a focus that has helped me bounce back from a variety of things, large, small and even devastating, over the years.

It is the difference between spending large amounts of time and energy arranging your life so nothing can go wrong or trying to fix the people in your world so you won’t be hurt/upset/etc. when they doing whatever as opposed to recognizing that there is nothing you can do that will protect you and spending the same time and energy building your coping skills.

I figured this out on my own when I was five years old and my father was killed. Being the people they were my family and relatives each found their own way to deal with it and I needed to do the same.

And I did.

I knew I couldn’t change what happened, there was nothing I could do that would bring him back. I had to go to school and listen to everyone say how sorry they were without falling apart and making a fool of myself. In other words, I needed to cope with what had happened and because no one could do it for me I did.

As I grew and other things happened I stayed focused on coping with them; most were the small, everyday variety that happen to all of us, while others were large.

The common element was that they were all things that made me fall apart, so I focused my energies on how fast I could put myself back together, because I had come to believe that falling apart was normal.

By the time I was in my twenties I was so good at it that most people who knew me thought nothing could dent me.

Ha! Little did they know, but by then I could fall apart on the first beat and put myself back together by the second.

I wish there was some methodology I could share that would pass the coping skills I have on, but I have found over the years that each person has to develop their own; what works for them.

What I can guarantee is that no matter what you do, you will never constrain your world to run perfectly smoothly with nary a bump or an upset.

But you can build your ability to handle whatever happens; to cope, keep going and deal with everything that life throws at you.

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I just finished Mary Higgins Clark’s memoir. Hers is a name you see everywhere, books, TV movies and on the big screen. The memoir is a fast read, a fascinating peek into the world that shaped this master storyteller and some excellent insights on just plain living.

“When a child comes to you wanting to share something he or she has written of sketched, be generous with our praise. If it’s a written piece, don’t talk about the spelling or the penmanship; look for creativity and applaud it. The flame of inspiration needs to be encouraged. Put a glass around that small candle and protect it from discouragement or ridicule.

I wonder if any adult—parent or teacher—realizes that young people never forgive or forget being humiliated.”

This really hit home. In high school I took a creative writing class; one assignment was to write a short screenplay from which our teacher would choose a few to critique in class.

He started with the one he thought was best and proceeded through the others. Mine was among those chosen and he tore it to pieces, not professionally, but with sarcasm and zingers. He ended the critique by asking how any student could be so arrogant as to think that the writing had any value whatsoever.

Needless to say, the so-called anonymity was a joke and everyone knew who the authors were and my humiliation was extreme. It was 35 years before I creatively wrote again, but never stories—that desire was totally dead and buried.

Higgins Clark shares two old definitions of happiness that should resonate with everyone and if they don’t then you need to take a hard look at your values.

“If you want to be happy for a year, win the lottery. If you want to be happy for life, love what you do.” and “Something to have, someone to love, and something to hope for.”

Definitely food for thought as you start gearing up for the holidays.

Finally, following up thread I started Friday and have decided to continue tomorrow, “It is not always how we act, but how we react that tells the story of our lives.”

I hope you will join me tomorrow to see why, in many cases, coping is a far more productive activity than fixing, both at work and in life.

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I write and talk a lot about what happens when you choose to change your MAP through awareness and the resulting boos to your energy and creativity.

What I can’t remember sharing with you is a critical ingredient in the change sauce that I call the Philosophy of ER.

I consciously developed it formally and have shared it for decades to offset all the talk about failure when people are working to change.

First, you have to understand that I don’t believe in failure; I don’t think that someone has truly failed unless they’re dead. As long as they’re breathing, the worst bums on skid row have the potential to change, i.e., the possibility is there, even if the likelihood is not.

For decades change has focused on setting goals and if they aren’t achieved as stated, then you had failed.

Over the years I’ve worked with a lot of people (including myself) whose self esteem was at best badly bruised, at worst like Swiss cheese.

They started by telling me how they had failed at this or that, but in more detailed discussions it turned out that, although they hadn’t achieved their stated goal within the deadline, the goals and deadlines (one or both) weren’t exactly reality based or had changed along the way and not been restated.

To be valid, goals must come with delivery dates, but those dates must be achievable—not easy, but achievable.

When you set goals without taking into account minor details, such as friends/family/spouse/kids/working/sleeping/eating, then you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Beyond being reality-based, we all need an ongoing sense of accomplishment, especially for that which can’t be done in a few days, to sustain the long term effort that big goals take—thus came the Philosophy of ER.

Over the last couple of decades I’ve ERed almost everything (even when it’s grammatically incorrect).

• I may not be wise, but I’m wisER.
• I may not be rich, but I’m richER.
• I may not be patient, but I’m patientER.
• I may not be skinny, but I’m skinniER.

You get the idea.

So start ERing today and tomorrow you too will be happiER, smartER, healthiER and successfulER.

Just keep reminding yourself that to err is human, but to ER is divine.

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