There is a difference in those you have it and those who don’t.
Sometimes, you have to remind those who have it that everyone one doesn’t have it, as they become frustrated interacting with those who don’t. But you don’t have to tell those who have it what it is.
In fact, you might not even be able to tell those who have it what it is. But if you have it, you can see it in them. If they have it, they can see it in you.
You don’t even have to understand it, but you’ll find life a lot easier once you embrace having it, assuming you actually have it.
You will probably find yourself constantly having to explain what it is to people who don’t have it. Or at least wanting to explain it so that they can understand it.
The effort is worthless. If they don’t have it, they can’t understand it.
At least not until they have their own personal light bulb moment, and they then get it for themselves.
Let’s say you’re shipwrecked. Assuming you’re free from any immediate danger (you’ve got a life raft and some supplies, there are no sharks or pirates lurking, etc.) would right now be the best time to debate with yourself if your nephew would rather have the Wolverine action claws or the Batman cape and mask for his birthday present next week?
You might think there are better things to focus on in a time of crisis, mainly surviving to the next moment. But what good is surviving to the next moment and the next moment and the next moment if you lose the sense of why you should be surviving. Otherwise, the alternative will start to feel more appealing and a lot less of a hassle.
When I when through my 2 days of survival training in the Air Force, the instructors knew that 95% of the cadets that were standing in front of them in the woods were basically on a camping trip and would never need any real field survival tips, but they taught us some mental tricks that would actually roll over well as basic life skills. The most important is the faith that you will survive, and the ability to keep those around you convinced of the same, despite the conditions you are facing. The common scenario for doom would be a group of survivors marching toward what they hope would be safety, where eventually, someone will start muttering “We’re all going to die...” Those words will quickly become a chorus in perfect lock-step harmony if not addressed immediately.
Take a look at the various aspects of your life. Whether it is the fear of more cutbacks and layoffs at work, or the strain of a spousal or parental relationship at home, all the battle plans in the world you can devise to survive an onslaught will do you no good if you’ve got nothing to live for after the war has been won.
Assuming you are not currently in the act of dodging bullets or arrows, now is exactly the right time to be planning that moment you’ll be looking forward too once you step off the field of battle.
AIG used government bailout money that was supposed to help shore out the struggling insurance/investment giant to pay executive bonuses and avoid contract lawsuits, which could have but the company out of business for good. The right thing to do legally, but the American public, and its new President, are not happy.
NBC Universal finally found a new way to brand the Sci Fi Channel, and in few months it will just be SyFy. Seriously. With a new tag line of “Imagine Greater.” If you thought fan boy hate was reserved of geeks and comic book movies, search for some of the comments online about this one. The hate is coming on strong, and from plenty of people who were barely holding on the channel as it was.
Sometimes your company has to deal with bad timing. Sometimes your company has to deal with a serious gamble of a decision. As the economy continues to suffer, expect a lot more chances to test your crisis management skills while you have to explain your actions.
And make sure you are prepared for the backlash. Because its going to come.
Americans are losing money, jobs, and patience. American businesses are trying their best to adapt to the new economic world. It’s a frightful existence, and some very old companies with long standing reputations will not make it out of this.
So what happens when hard times come? People panic, leaders jump to a conclusion that they hope will get the best results with the least amount of effort and pain, and decisions are made that are meant to push the greater good, but looks more like the digging of their own graves.
Now is the time to make smart decisions that take advantage of the disadvantages of the current reality. Now is the time to continue advertising, so negotiate for new rates with your outlets that have taken good care of you so that you can continue to take good care of them. Now is the time to reach out to new, nontraditional customers to make up for the regulars you are bound to lose, but not alienate your current customer base that has gotten you this far. Now is the time to make sure the tough decisions you make are the right decisions, not just legally binding.
Now is definitely not the time for perplexing moves for the soul propose of generating buzz. There really is such a thing as bad press.
Nothing is better than hearing a ‘Good job’ encouragement from co-workers when you are struggling through a troubled project. Gaining a sense of admiration from those whom you slug it out with in the trenches daily is often all the motivation you need to convince yourself all the trouble you are going through will actually be worth the painful amount of effort you have put into your project.
Noting is worse than giving a co-worker a ‘Good job’ encouragement that frankly isn’t doing a good job. You end up doing the same thing that people who keep giving their dogs treats after they keep peeing on the carpet do—giving positive reinforcement to negative behavior.
Motivation though positive reinforcement is awesome, but make sure you're not motivating someone to continue to do something you rather have them change. If a subordinate is doing a horrible job producing after-action reports, don’t give him kudos for at least getting the report turned in on time. If your teammate is bringing down your department with sarcasm, don’t encourage him by telling him his jokes are consistently funny.
You do want to raise the spirits of the long suffering and struggling employee. You just don’t want to raise their hopes beyond a level of reality. Do not give positive reinforcements that would suggest a negative action is acceptable, especially if it is just to raise up a person's spirits.
A lesson you learn pretty quickly in the military is that when the people who are supposed to take care of you take care of you, you focus on the results achieved and not the method used, because sometime you really don’t want to know.
I picked that up as a young Air Force officer, and was blessed to have dedicated staff of enlisted airmen and civilians that knew how to get things done and how to keep me out of trouble. I just had to give them the outcome preferred, a list of resources I knew I had available, and a timeline I wanted to pursue. Then, I could just sit back and let the experts at their jobs do their jobs the best way they knew how. I was really blessed early on to have teams that rarely failed, noting that that they actually overachieved about 85 of the time.
When I took me first position that allowed me to really take point on projects, I got a reinforcement of the basic tenants of ‘I got it done, but don’t ask me how.’ I now had a general presenting me his plans that he wanted executed, along and the desired outcome. His staff, knowing the general, stressed the importance of following his plans. Twice I follow the general’s plans for a project given to me, and presented the results that were well below the expected level of results. The first time the plan was blown off, but the second time, the general asked me why I would follow such a stupid plan in the first place. As tactfully as possible, I let the general know that I was given the rough parameters that I had to follow, although I really wanted to say he had given me the stupid idea that I knew wasn’t going to work, but was told has to be followed anyway.
From that point on, I stopped listening to ‘orders’ and starting listening for ‘outcome.’ Whenever that general offered up a plan, I ignored the plan completely, but I made sure that what the general said he wanted and what the troops in the field were expecting were one in the same, and deliverd that. I would put a plan into play that was solid, and ensured that I had over performed on the task when it was time to present. And I always gave the general credit for ‘his director in the formation of our plan of attack.’
I was able to impress myself with the ability make things happen when left to my own devices, and learned quickly to respect the output you can receive from subordinates when you give them a mission and then just let them achieve it with constantly meddling.
Since leaving the military, I have worked for several different managers, some good and bad. I am constantly amazed by managers who push a personal agenda that from the outside looks like a losing campaign. Their insistence on having high achievers do it ‘their way’ quickly becomes a problem, and the projects and tasks almost always come up as failures. And if the manager is spiteful, they’ll usually destroy the moral of the high achiever for failing to live up to some loftfull standard, even thought that standard is wholly unachievable, and should be blatantly obvious to most. If the manager is just foolish, the high achiever will usually ignore that person until they are replaced, or just leave the company to suffer their own fate without him.
If you’re a manager, do yourself a favor. Give your veterans and high achievers their assignments and then back away and let them do amazing work for you. Give your rookies a little guidance and instruction on a way to get their work done that works, but assure them if they find a better process, give it a try.
Three common fears that plague small business owners (and Type-A people in general) are the fear to dream big, the fear of accepting baby steps to success, and the fear of admitting you’re having a down day.
Dreaming big becomes a problem when your big dreams fizzle out somewhere along the way. Have enough big dreams that don’t come to pass, and you’ll stop dreaming altogether. You face this fear by dreaming big anyway, although you first set some realistic goals that you should be able to meet with just a fair amount of effort. Then you are free to set your dream goals at an insanely obscene level that truly surpasses your conventional thinking goal. Publicize you lower goals, prioritize the big goals, and you may find that your performance projections will consistently hit somewhere in the middle.
To explain the need to accept baby steps and small victories toward your success, I’m going to use two American sport analogies from baseball and football. Businesses want to see home runs, because they mean instant results and a big lift in spirits. But the reason why a home run is so exciting is that they don’t happen for every at bat. Their scarcity makes them so exciting and motivational, helpings the teams move along through the mundane art of single and doubles to just get on base (and in business to just get things done daily). A business should operative on the mindset of a football team. A football team has to move the length of the field, 100 yards, to score. But to keep the offense on the field, the team just has to advance 10 yards in 4 tries. That’s baby steps and small victories daily, not home runs and hail marys.
And nobody ever wants to feel down, and when they are, they don’t want to admit in. But you usually don’t have much of a choice if your personal energy is visibly waning or you business is showing public signs of decline. Man up and admit your not doing so well at the moment, then do something to improve your situation. And do it immediately. There is no shame in being knocked down, but staying down or lying down are inexcusable.
Reviewing What I Said: A Potential Star Employee's Wish List
In working on my new writings, I've been reviewing lots of old writings to see if there are strings of pearls of wisdom that I can claim...or if I have been a classic flip-flopper. Submitted for your review and approval, and article I put on the Cool Corporate dot COM Blog in October of 2007. I actually got one comment on this, and if memory serves me correctly, it was spam...
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If you are a manager, every so often you will come across an employee in your organization, hopefully under you supervision, that just shines above all the rest of their peers without much effort. That star or potential star employee is a gem you may have lucked upon, but it will take more than a little luck to keep them working for you and your company. And even worse than them leaving for your competition, they could get sullen and just stop putting forth any effort, and are no longer working 'with' your company.
How do you keep your stars happily working in their cubicles and shining for your company? If you were to ask any of these employees, I bet the following items would all be on their wish list:
* Give Them Co-Workers Who Can Keep Up - Nothing is more frustrating to a highly motivated, highly mobile worker that being partnered with a slug who just simply can't keep up. Chances are your star is not stuck up or conceited, but if you place them in teams that aren't performing because they truly can't perform or just don't care all long as the checks don't bounce, you’re just showing your star that you don't care about their level of effort. They'll find a place where movement at their speed matters.
* Give Them The Resources They Need - Just like being placed with bad people, having poor or no resources available to get the job done means it will be harder--if not impossible--to get the job done. Make the jobs easier to get done, and they'll get more jobs done.
* Give Them The Time They Need - Micromanagement is awful. Insane deadlines are awful. Not letting your stars get their job done, or rushing them to complete tasks sooner than they need to be completed will frustrate, confuse, and infuriate.
* Give Them A Chance To Screw Up - If Jack Welsh gets to blow up a building and still become CEO of General Electric, a star employee in the making could surely survive a missed deadline, target, or even bombing a presentation. They're not screwing up on purpose. They'll learn a valuable lesson from the occasional failure, and especially from a huge failure.
You've got a star employee, or a potential in the making. You've got a prime chance to directly effect the career and life of person who could be an eventual rock star CEO, or just another business burnout. Most of their outcome will truly be up to time, chance, and their own efforts. Don't be the jerk that makes it harder that it needs to be.
Even with the news of more and more layoffs, you CAN NOT lesson your professional goals.
If you are showing up for work with the sole purpose of trying not to get fired, you are selling yourself and your company short.
I work for a company that isn’t doing so well at the moment, but our mission is pretty clear, at least locally. Come to work today, learn a little more, innovate a little bit, keep kicking the competition’s ass, and chances are we’ll get to do the same thing tomorrow.
It IS NOT show up, lay low, and take home a check at the end of the week.
My personal goals are insanely high. That in itself is a personal problem with failure at times to reach expectations...
…but if my only expectation was to show up, lay low, and take home a check at the end of the week, what kind of existence is that? It’s not worth my time, and probably not worth the money my company or personal clients pay me. And they currently aren’t paying that much
I have recently finished the book Fire Your Boss by Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine, where the authors pretty much smack you in the face with the notion that your job is your job because they pay you, and you have every right to leave a job if someone offers to pay you more. But what’s going to motivate anyone to pay you more…or let you stay and keep your current paycheck. Marginal effort or massive effort?
Welcome to my new blog. This is where I will chronicle the next phase of mis-adventures of my life. Thank you for staying on the ride, and for you newcomers to the inside of my mental mania, I will do my best to make sure the trip is both entertaining and educational.
Life In Fast Forward: The Blog is still a bit of a work in progress. Keep checking in for new posts and site updates.
About Blog
This blog supports some of the thoughts and interjections from the folks at Fast Forward Business Properties. Our ideas, things we test, and a few random thoughts will show up here.
Name: J. Cleveland Payne
Home: Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
About Me: News is my profession, so it only fits that I am a news junkie. I'm a radio show/segment producer for a news/talk radio station in Little Rock, Arkansas.
