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"decide"

BlogTeam

Decide: We’ve Got it All Backwards

by Ron Potter December 4, 2014

I’ve learned this concept from Chris McGoff. In his book, The Primes: How Any Group Can Solve Any Problem, Chris lays out numerous frameworks on how teams work. One of the most powerful for me and many of my teams is understanding the meaning of the word “Decide.”

I’m not trying to be morbid here, but what do the following words have in common?: pesticide, homicide, suicide, genocide? They all end in “cide.” In Latin, the word means kill, killer, murderer, to cause death. One of my clients who was a Latin student said there was even an indication of public execution—to put to death publicly.

So, if we go back to our word decide, it doesn’t mean to figure out what to do, it means to figure out what to kill.

If leaders and teams would actually start killing off the options or directions they’ve decided not to pursue, a great amount of resources could be saved and redirected toward the chosen path.

When you must decide, figure out what you’re going to kill and publicly execute it.

Image Source: Brandon Doran

Image Source: Brandon Doran

All too often, we decide what we’re going to do and we muster the resources to pursue that option. But no one tells the many people down through the organization what to stop doing. And in fact, there’s lots of momentum in the life of the organization for people to continue doing what they’ve been doing over the last several months or years. If you don’t publicly execute that work, they’ll naturally continue to do it.

As I was working through this concept with one of my clients, one team member said, “But we’re really good at prioritizing our work.” And she was right. The organization was really good at knowing which issues should receive top priority and the most resources. But as we continued to pursue the concept, it became painfully obvious how many resources were being applied to extremely low priority items. In fact, by deciding to kill off those low priority items it was astounding how many resources would be freed up to concentrate on the things that really need to be accomplished.

When faced with a team or leadership decision, decide what to kill and then publicly execute it and you’ll be amazed at how many more resources you have available to pursue the path of success.

Why do we have such a hard time killing off projects, initiative, lines of work or almost anything that people have been dedicating their time to? I can think of several reasons but what’s your experience? Share with us.

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BlogTeam

Have We Decided Yet? Probably Not!

by Ron Potter May 1, 2012
Image Source: Garrett Coakley, Creative Commons

Image Source: Garrett Coakley, Creative Commons

One of my clients (thanks Mindy) recently introduced me to a book called The Primes: How Any Group Can Solve Any Problem by Chris McGoff. While I’ve found several useful concepts in the book one of the most powerful is the definition of the word “decide.” Notice the make-up of the word: De-Cide.

What do the words pesticide, homicide, fungicide have in common? They (and many others) all end in “cide.” The – cide ending originates from the Latin word caedere meaning to kill. It concerns death, destruction, extermination and deliberate killing. There is even a public execution connotation to the word meaning “to put to death.”

In our corporate world we’ve mistakenly come to believe that when we decide, we’re making a decision about what “to do.” But when we decide what to do, we never decide what to stop. It’s a little bit like the overwhelming morass that our governments have gotten into; every year our legislatures add more and more laws to the books, they just never kill any and so our laws and regulations have become so voluminous we can hardly act freely any more. In our corporate life when we continually decide what to do and seldom decide what to stop doing we spread our precious resources thinner and thinner.

See if you can make this shift with your team. When faced with a decision, spend more time figuring out which alternative you are going to kill. Figure out the consequences of killing that particular option. You’ll notice some deep seated attachment and engagement that you never uncovered when you were decide which alternative to “do.” There will be many people in your organization that may have spent many years honing their skills performing the alternative that you’re about to kill. How do you think they’ll react? They’ll do everything they can to preserve their job and skill set. They’ll do it overtly. They’ll do it covertly. But this is exactly what happens when you decide what to “do” versus what to kill. While the priorities have shifted to the more important task that you decided to “do”, nobody told the people doing the other alternative to stop or shift their resources to the higher priority item or to cut their project to the bare essentials. Thus, we are constantly looking for resources to accomplish all of the high priority items and we create work forces that feel overwhelmed and over extended.

Instead, try deciding. Try deciding what to kill. Try dealing with the fall out and consequences of telling people that we’re no longer doing that activity or project. Help them get reassigned, retrained, more engaged in the activities that you’re not killing.

Maybe you’re very good at prioritizing your work. However, when you prioritize your list of 30 activities rather than deciding which ones to kill, you will still have a huge amount of resources working on priorities 16-30. If you will decide, you’ll notice that you have more than enough resources to accomplish the top 15 priorities.

Start de-ciding! You’ll find yourself and your company suddenly much more productive.

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Short Book Reviews

How We Decide

by Ron Potter January 9, 2012

How We DecideRon’s Short Review: Good understand of personal and group decision making.

Amazon-Buy-Button

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BlogLeadership

Leading Change

by Ron Potter March 9, 2023

The basis for this blog is a Harvard Business Review article by Patti Sanchez titled “The Secret to Leading Organizational Change is Empathy.”

I’ve had several experiences in my consulting career and personal life that emphasize the importance of empathy. One of them was a personal experience.

The Association

We moved into a new city several years ago to be closer to one daughter and her family. This particular family lived in the Middle East for at least ten years and we wanted to spend more time getting to know our grandkids before they went off to college. After looking at several possible locations we settled on a small community of condos within a couple of miles of our daughter’s house.

After a few years, I was asked to be the association president. The president before me had been in that position for several years and it seemed to him he was constantly dealing with conflict. When I agreed to run and won the presidential position, his words to me were something like, “Good Luck. This is a rough crowd.” He felt like there were competing desires within the homeowners and there was no way to reconcile them.

There were only sixteen homeowners in the association, so the first thing I decided to do was get to meet and listen to the needs of each of them. I had no agenda and no particular goal. I just wanted to listen and show empathy.

I visited each of the sixteen families and just listened. No goal. No timeframe. No rush. Each family invited me in and talked with me about their situation and desires. I made no attempt to correct or guide them, I just wanted to hear them. I left each visit with no promises made. I had just listened.

There were a couple of difficult issues that the association faced. After those visits, I formulated my plans (with the executive team) and let the residents know what I was going to recommend for a vote at our annual meeting a few weeks later. They had been controversial issues for a few years and I wondered how the discussion and vote would go. There wasn’t much discussion, so we put the issues to vote. All the issues were passed by unanimous votes. People felt they had been listened to. In fact even now, several years later, one of the residents who had been the most controversial and vocal calls me “the best president they ever had.” Why? Because I listened to her with empathy.

Who’s the Boss?

Another issue I remember is related to my consulting career. The CEO resided in the US but they had major operations in Europe and SE Asia. The European leader for the company was Irish and resided in Ireland. He was an authoritarian leader. People did what he told them to do or else. After our team meeting about leading with empathy, I was hoping he would change. Unfortunately, not.

When I began to talk with him about being a leader, I asked him to describe what a leader was like. He proceeded to tell me about the British ruling Ireland. The Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland by English kings happened in the last 1100s. His view of being a strong leader went back nearly a thousand years. But to him, a great, strong leader was based on England ruling Ireland. He wasn’t about to shake that image that a ruler was someone who came in and subjugated people to do what they were told when they were told.

Experience

Question your own thoughts and motives. What has your experience taught you? Who empowers you as an employee, that controlling boss who keeps you under his thumb or the empathetic boss who makes you feel like you’re a part of what’s going on?

Most often people think of an empathic leader as weak and a controlling leader as strong. That’s not true. A great empathic leader is one who helps you grow, develop, listen, and help your team make decisions. A controlling leader is one who makes all the decisions and expects you to respond. My observation over the years is that good people will leave a boss like that as quickly as possible. The people who stay under those conditions are sometimes referred to as “yes men” and all the creativity leaves the organization. Believe me, now and in the coming years creativity will become more and more required. Without it, companies will die quickly.

Fortune 500

Only sixty companies remain that were in the Fortune 500 after WWII. Why is that? One of my beliefs is that after WWII, most of the companies on the list were being run by officers from the war. They knew how to “command.” They expected their commands to be carried out without question. Companies were generally not creative. In order to survive the coming years, companies (leaders) will be required to be creative.

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BlogPersonal

Real First

by Ron Potter December 22, 2022

Recently I blogged about “firsts” in my life and how they shaped me (us). As I looked back through that blog of “firsts” in my life, I believe that for the most part, they were just a first for me. Many people had done those things, were doing those things, and continue to use and do them today.

First for Me

They included:

  • Typing Class
  • Survey Class (and the Curta Calculator)
  • Walking structural steel
  • Computers and Blackberries
  • Executive Consulting
  • Using software to speak into and convert to written text

Of all the things on that list, the Curta Calculator stands out as being completely unique. Mine is the only one I have ever seen. I still have it today and it’s still the only one I’ve ever seen.

History of Curta

I decided to discover the history of the Curta.

Curt Herzstark was born in Vienna in 1902. His family was in the business of building calculators in the early 1900s. The machines were big and beautiful, and expensive. Curt said, “I need a machine that will fit in my pocket and I can use to calculate.”

But then WWII started. German soldiers came to Austria where Curt lived. Curt’s mother was Catholic, but his father was Jewish. The Germans converted the calculator factory to one that made Panzer tanks. Everything was stable for a while but then two of the factory employees were caught listening to an English radio station. Their chief mechanic was beheaded. Everything changed.

The SS threw Curt into the Pankrác Prison camp where the torturing of Jews was routine. However, the managing engineer at the factory heard about Curts’s hand-held calculator (although still in his head and on a few drawings). The chief (German) engineer said to Curt, “We will allow you to make and draw your calculator. If it works we will give one to the Führer as a present after the war.” (Assuming they would win.)

The End of WWII

Herzstark had completed his drawings by April 1945 when the Americans showed up and freed all of the prisoners. Curt walked about 175 miles to the city of Weimar. It was about the only factory still standing. Curt’s drawing was so complete and clear it only took the factory about 3 months to make three prototypes. But then the Russians showed up.

Prince of Liechtenstein

The only person Curt could find who expressed any interest was the prince of Liechtenstein. About 110 miles away.
The first Curtas went on sale in Liechtenstein in 1948 (the year I was born) and continued to be produced until the 1970s when electronic calculators took over the market. 1948–1970. My prime growing up and education years.
What do you have to complain about? Here is a man that was put into a German concentration camp. He walked nearly 300 miles because he believed in what he had made. He went through pain, suffering, and atrocities and yet kept going.

Have you developed a similar character or are you brainwashed by today’s media telling us that we deserve to be happy all the time? Just buy (whatever) and it will make you happy. No, it won’t.  Become a person of character and realize that this life will bring you difficulties. It may not make you happy but it will provide a level of contentment that will carry you through life’s difficulties.

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BlogPersonal

Influential People

by Ron Potter December 15, 2022

A few weeks ago I talked about Ashira Jones and the influence she had on my life.   She may not even remember meeting me.

I decided to talk about a few other people who were also an influence in my life.

I would have to list my father as number one on that list.

My Father

My father grew up in a small town in southern Michigan where he also raised me and my siblings.  For the most part, he only left Michigan a couple of times in his life.

The most impactful departure was WWII.  His first assignment was in Northern Africa.  He was part of the force that chased Rommel across and then out of North Africa.  That part of his military career was part of the Allied Forces that fought the Germans in Tunisia and drove them from the African continent and back to Europe.  (My daughter and her husband now live in Tunis.  My son-in-law is the Facility Manager for the US Embassy there.)  As my father’s unit chased Rommel back into Europe he ended up in Anzio.  There was one of the worst battles for the Allied Forces and he lost a leg from a shrapnel hit and was shipped home.

With one leg (which must have left him in constant pain) he wore an ill-fitting artificial leg (nothing like the high-tech legs of today) and yet started a bottled-gas business that required him to wrestle 100-pound propane cylinders (empty) and crawl under old farmhouses (the rural community was converting from coal and fuel oil to propane).

And yet I never heard him complain about his life.  He was a fantastic human being and anytime I feel like I could complain about my life circumstances, I think of him.  He was one of the most influential people in my life.

My Physics Instructor

Mr. Steven Ray was my high school physics instructor.  It seemed to me that he was always “picking” on me.  He would always be saying “Potter, what’s the answer?”  “Potter, what were the steps you took to come to your conclusion?”  “Potter, come to the board and show the class your work.”

One day I ran into him in a back hallway with no one around.  I asked him why he was always picking on me.  His answer was “Because you’re worth it.”  That stopped me in my tracks.  I had nothing I could say.  After a few minutes silence, he smiled and patted me on the shoulder.

He was the only high school teacher that I visited after graduation.

Your Real Value

For many years, I worked with a client that ran a global company.  After one session where we had employees for Europe, Asia, North American, and South America, we were sitting in his office talking about the day.  The name of my company was Team Leadership Culture.

He started by telling me what a great job we had done building teams.

Next, he told me how I had taught him to be a great leader.

Finally, we talked about taking this learning throughout the culture.

There we had it.  Team Leadership Culture.  I was feeling very good about what we had accomplished.  Then he said, “But your real value is…”  I was floored.  He had just listed every element of my business TLC and I had no idea what he was talking about.  We were in his office with our shoes off and just chatting.  He said that my real value was when we just sat around and talked about where the company was and how he was doing.  He found as much value in that as he did when I was working on TLC.

Influential People Is a Choice

Just like the “firsts” that I wrote about last, the people that have been influential in our lives help shape us into the human beings that we are.  But keep in mind that we have a choice about who influences our lives.  Look at their character.  Are you being influenced by people of high character?  Take a look at what they talk about and how they see the world.  Is everything focused on them?  Do they see the world as being against them?  If we have selected people of high character and people who think more of others than they do themselves, they’re worth having as people of influence in our lives.  In fact, they’ll see more about who we are than we do ourselves.  They’re worth being chosen as People of Influence in our lives.

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BlogPersonal

Firsts

by Ron Potter December 1, 2022

We received a card the other day and in the card, and they mentioned that they missed my blogs.  It was not my intention to stop blogging,  it’s just that my health issues have left me with the inability of producing weekly blogs as I have done for years.  It takes more “thinking” than I have the ability to accomplish and it has left me with typing skills that are almost non-existent.  That lead me to remember those “first” things I ever did.  Much of the world was ahead of me on many of these fronts but they were “firsts” for me.

Typing Class in High School

I attended a very small high school.  One of the skills I thought would be useful for me in college and beyond was typing so I joined my high school typing class.  I was the only boy in the room and because I was the fastest and most accurate I was at the head of my class.  Unfortunately, that upset the girls in the class as they prepared to become secretaries and typists in the business world.  They didn’t have a lot of opportunities in the business world when we were graduating.

Survey Class in My First Couple Years of College

One of my early classes in college was a survey class.  At the time we would have to go into the field and run a survey circuit.  We would make notes during the survey and then return to the classroom and use a hand crank Friden Calculator to check all of our notes and make sure our math “closed.”  If your work “closed,” great.  If not, back to the field to start over.  It was very time-consuming and I felt I needed to find a better way.

I had started to hear about a Curta Calculator on the road race circuit.  They used it to calculate the speed needed to hit their next point as accurately as possible.  Now I could go into the field, take all my notes, then sit under a tree and use my Curta to check my math.  I still own my Curta over 50 years later.

Structural Steel (Walking)

My first job out of engineering school was walking structural steel on a power plant.  I worked as high as 160′ in the air.  That’s approximately a 16-story building.  Back then, there was no safety harness belt or any netting below me.  Just me, the breeze, my instruments, and an 8-inch beam to walk on.  It was a terrifying experience but I had a wise chief engineer.

When I went to him after that first day of terror and told him I couldn’t do that, he asked me to spend two weeks doing the best I could at my job up on the steel.  If I still wanted off the steel, he would find me another job to accomplish.  His wisdom came with the fact that after two weeks, I could do the job.  There were still terrifying moments but I learned a great deal about facing my fears and what my fears were.

Introducing Computers

I had finished my bachelor’s degree at Michigan on a slide rule.  I still own my Pickett from those days.  Several years later I was teaching a course in the graduate engineering school at the University of Utah.  None of the students had seen or touched a computer yet.  I introduced them to computers and had them working on a program for scheduling that I had hired a friend of mine to write.  Soon after, microcomputers were introduced and the computer age began.

Blackberry

In the late 90s, a company called Research in Motion (RIM) introduced what they called the Blackberry.  I was blown away.  RIM introduced the Blackberry publically in late 1999 (December?).  I purchased my first one within months of that introduction.

Consulting with Executives

After years in engineering and software, I decided that I wanted to become a consultant.  I started with a partner who has been in the business and learned “the ropes.”  Eventually, I struck out on my own and named my company TLC standing for Team, Leadership, Culture.

I was working with one of my first CEOs and we had just finished a session with members of his teams from around the world.  It was just him and me in his office that evening and he said,

  • You helped me to build that global team more than I could have imagined.
  • You’ve taught me more about being a leader than I’ve ever seen in the leaders I’ve worked for.
  • Today you helped me build more of that into the culture of the company than I could believe.

At that point, I was feeling pretty good about my TLC company.  Then he said, “Dut your real value is…”!!  I was shaken.  I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about.  He had just covered every point of TLC.  He finished, “Your real value is when we talk like this.”  That’s when I learned that corporate leaders needed someone they could talk with, someone they could trust, and someone they could express their fears with.  That was my greatest value.

Dictate in Word

Because of the deterioration of my typing skills I needed to find a new way to create blogs other than just typing them out.  I discovered that Microsoft Word has a dictate section.  I’m now learning how to talk with MS Word and convert it into text for publishing my blogs.

My “Firsts”

I’m sure there are others but the ones that came to mind for this blog included:

  • Typing Class
  • Survey Class
  • Learning about my fears on the structural steel
  • Computers and Blackberrys
  • Being a sounding board for executives
  • Converting my spoken word to the written word

Our “firsts” help determine who we are.  They shape us and form us.  Think about the “firsts” you’re accomplished or even walked away from.  You’ll discover a lot about who you are.

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BlogIn-Depth Book Reviews

Management of the Absurd

by Ron Potter May 5, 2022

As I continue the review of some of the books I’ve read through the years, next up is Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson.

Management of the Absurd

A dictionary definition of the word absurd calls it “wildly unreasonable or illogical.”  I consider myself both highly reasonable and logical so this definition didn’t make sense to me.  Which may be why I read it.  My notes alone for the book totaled up to 15 pages so I guess it caught my interest.

This book is written by Richard Farson.  In the book, he lays out eight parts.

  1. A Different Way of Thinking
  2. The “Technology of” Human Relations
  3. The Paradoxes of Communication
  4. The Politics of Management
  5. Organizational Predicaments
  6. Dilemmas of Change
  7. The Aesthetics of Leadership
  8. Avoiding the Future

I’ll quickly touch on each of the eight parts but I think you’ll notice the absurdity in the titles themselves.

A Different Way of Thinking

The most important discoveries come from taking a fresh look at what people take for granted.  They cannot see it because it is too “obvious” or is what they expect to see or not seen.  Farson calls this the invisible obvious.  I’ve often seen when the “expert” doesn’t pay any attention to the new person on the team or someone who doesn’t have the same “expertise” they do on a particular topic.  The absurdity comes from the fact that the best new creative ideas come from the person who is taking a fresh look at a topic.  This can come from the new person or, if you train yourself well, you can provide that fresh look no matter how much of an “expert” you are on a topic.

The “Technology of” Human Relations

Farson says that “The more important a relationship, the less skill matters.”  In both parenthood and management, it’s not so much what we do as what we are that counts.  It is the ability to meet each situation armed not with a battery of techniques but with an openness that permits a genuine response.

Effective leaders and managers do not regard control as the main concern.  Instead, they approach situations as learners or teachers or sometimes both.

My take from this section is the openness and genuine response that people respect and will be motivated by.  Trying to control or dictate situations will not motivate people.

The Paradoxes of Communication

Paradox is another one of those interesting words.  Webster says that it is “a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true.”

Listening can also be a disturbing experience.  All of us have strong needs to see the world in certain ways, and when we really listen, so that we understand the other person’s perspective, we risk being changed ourselves.

The best kind of listening comes not from technique but from being genuinely interested in what really matters to the other person.

This is what I have come to think of as listening to understand rather than listening to respond.  Often when we’re listening to the other person, we’re building a list in our head about how were are going to respond.  That’s easier and takes less energy than listening to truly understand what the other person is saying and the belief system they are basing their statement upon.  Listening to understand creates a different set of questions, often forcing the other person to expose their own belief system.

The Politics of Management

Fighting for the rights of special groups has contributed to an erosion of civility.  When people are treated as representatives of special groups, society is fragmented.  The achievement and preservation of the community must become our top priority.  Otherwise, the concept of rights has no meaning.

Organizational Predicaments

Organizations that need help most will benefit from it least.

I experienced this with one client I worked with many years ago.  The head of HR knew that the team needed help and convinced them to employ my services.  After talking with the head of HR, I decided to highly discount my services because I didn’t believe that would have been willing to pay my going fee.  In their mind, they just weren’t in that bad of shape.  After working with the team for almost a year I believed we had learned a lot and gotten much better.  If we were climbing a ten-step ladder, we had just successfully made it up to step one.  However, to the team this was seen as such great strides—they felt like they had reached the top of the ladder.  Because they were so much better than they had been a year ago they no longer had a need for my services.  In their mind, they had achieved everything they could have.

Dilemmas of Change

I’ve talked about the word “dilemma” before.  The foundation is “dilaminent” which meant horns.  Being on the horns of a bull put you in a dilemma.  You’re going to get gored either way.

Our author Farson makes the point that creative ideas are relatively easy to elicit.   Implementing them is a much tougher task.

Farson says that it’s important that we fail.  We need to fail ofter.  If we don’t, it means we’re not testing our limits.

The Aesthetics of Leadership

Farson says, “There are no leaders, there is only leadership.”

One of the great enemies of organizational effectiveness is our stereotypical image of a leader.  We imagine a commanding figure perhaps standing in front of an audience, talking, not listening.  The real strength of a leader is the ability to elicit the strength of the group.  Leadership is less the property of a person than the property of a group.

Avoiding the Future

Farson closes with “If absurdity is ubiquitous, if the most important goals are lost causes, why do we keep playing this absurd game?  We play it because it is the only game in town.  Of course, it is absurd.  Of course, it is only a game.  But it is a game well worth playing and worth playing well.”

Management of the Absurd is a long thought-provoking book.  I have not done it justice in the blog so I suggest you find a copy, read it, and underline it so that you come away with the greatest learnings for you.

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BlogRegrets

Regrets – Boldness

by Ron Potter March 24, 2022

In Daniel Pink’s latest book, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, Pink lists four core regrets:

  • Foundation
  • Boldness
  • Moral
  • Connection

While I haven’t fully read this book yet, it seems like the perfect next sequence after the series of being afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down that I recently wrote from Paul’s ancient text to the people of Corinth.

In this second of Pink’s regrets, Boldness talks about the lack of boldness to “accomplish a few important goals within the limited spat of a single life.”  This lack of boldness seems a lot more urgent at age 74 than it did at age 24.  That’s not unexpected because of the age difference but it’s important to be aware that accomplishing some things will only happen at a younger age.  At some point, it becomes obvious that there is just not enough time to accomplish some things that you had intended to accomplish all of your life.  So it’s important to begin those things that you would like to or intend to accomplish in your life when there is still time to accomplish them.

Why Boldness?

It takes boldness to start early because:

  1. It’s difficult to carve out the time to accomplish something out of the ordinary when it seems like your everyday life is overtaking you at the moment.
  2. It also means that we must overcome the fear of failure when we start a new venture early in life.

You might be saying to yourself, “I’ll be more equipped to do something bold when I have a little more experience.”  Or you might be thinking, “Once I get through the busy part of my life I’ll have more time to dedicate to that bold idea.”

Looking Back

The subtitle of Pink’s book is “How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.”  This seems evident to me now that I’m in my mid-70s.  It’s easy to say that “This is something I might have accomplished 50 years ago.”  It’s more difficult to think that I should have started five years ago.  There’s still a lot of time left to step out and accomplish that bold idea.  After all, if I could accomplish the task in 40 years, I could surely accomplish it in 35 years.  This is just an excuse for not stepping out in boldness and pretty soon that 35 years turns into 30 years until it’s too late to accomplish it at all.

I have a grandson who is a world-class bicyclist and I would like to go riding with him.  But today that would be impossible.  And yet, I’ve seen some 70-year-olds who could at least stay with him for a while.  The difference is they started when they were young.  They didn’t put it off.

Moving Forward

Plan.  Start.  You want to be better athletically, pick your sport and start today.  You want to be better at chess, start today.  You want to be healthier, start today.  Whatever it is, start today.  Don’t put it off until next year or when you turn 40 or sometime in the future.  Don’t put it off.  Don’t expect to accomplish your end goal immediately.  Start small.  Pink says “accomplish a few important goals.”

This means you know what is important.  This means you’ve planned.  This means you’ve taken that first step today.  You’ll be able to look back a year from now and be astonished at how far you’ve come.  You’ll be amazed at what it looks like in a decade or two.  But if you don’t start today, you’ll be looking back on that year, decade, two decades from now thinking “what if?”  Or thinking “I could have.”

Decide, Plan, Start

First, you need to decide what will be important to you.

Then, you need to build a plan for accomplishing your goal.

Finally, start today.  Just small steps.  But start!

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BlogRegrets

Regrets – Foundational

by Ron Potter March 17, 2022

A friend of mine recently sent me Daniel Pink’s latest book, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.  (Thanks, Chris.)

While I haven’t fully read this book yet, it seems like the perfect next sequence after the series of being afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down.

Four Core Regrets

Let’s take a look at the Four Core Regrets that Pink identifies:

  • Foundation

Foundational regrets begin with an irresistible lure and end with inexorable logic.

  • Boldness

At the heart of all boldness regrets is the thwarted possibility of growth.  The failure to become the person—happier, braver, more evolved—one could have been.  The failure to accomplish a few important goals within the limited span of a single life.

  • Moral

Deceit.  Infidelity. Theft. Betrayal. Sacrilege.  Sometimes the moral regrets people submitted to the surveys read like the production notes for a Ten Commandments training video.

  • Connection

What gives our lives significance and satisfaction are meaningful relationships.  But when those relationships come apart, whether by intent or inattention, what stands in the way of bringing them back together are feelings of awkwardness.  We fear that we’ll botch our efforts to reconnect, that we’ll make intended recipients even more uncomfortable.  Yet these concerns are almost always misplaced.

Unavoidable Foundation Regrets

We start with the foundational regrets. Like the issues identified in Paul’s letter to the people of Corinth in the last several blogs, these seem to be unavoidable.  I believe I am an honorable person with good intent.  But as I look back over my life, the first thing that comes to mind is my many regrets.  I am reminded of regrets in each of the four core regrets identified by Pink.

  • Irresistible Lure.  Irresistible means impossible.  Have you been drawn to something that just seems irresistible?  Fortunate for me, immoral things haven’t been irresistible.  However, two material things have seemed irresistible to me.  One is a nice car.  I’m not talking about super-expressive cars but I am talking about the top-of-the-line American cars.  I decided with my first new car in 1969 that I was not going to resist a new car every three years.  Both of my daughters and sons-in-law find that rather extravagant because they are into decent used cars.
    My other irresistible lure has been nice watches.  I think it was because my father bought my first new all-electric watch for my high school graduation.  I’ve been in love with nice watches ever since.
  • Inexorable Logic.  The word inexorable means impossible to stop or prevent.  I have been a very logical person all my life.  I can convince myself of almost anything.  The logic of my own reasoning becomes so strong and sound that it becomes almost impossible to resist or deny.  Unlike automobiles where I made the illogical decision to lease a new car every three years (knowing it is illogical), I talk myself into the new watch with pure logic (or at least I think so).

Convincing Ourselves

My regrets tend to be more materialistic.  But I know that some people deal with immoral issues.  Like the new car in my case, I openly admit that a new car every three years doesn’t make sense.  But if you reached an immoral decision and don’t openly admit it as being immoral, then it tends toward the evil side of human behavior.  You know that it’s immoral but you decide to do it anyway.

For those issues where you’re convinced in your mind (through logic or ignorance), you need that trusted friend who is capable of saying to you, “You know that’s wrong, don’t you?”

Dealing with Foundational Regrets

Don’t be evil.  The world knows it, and more importantly, you know it.  Evil will eat at your character and humaneness.  Evil will become one of the more painful things in your life.

Don’t let your bad logic overcome your wisdom.  You need that trusted friend who will say, “You know what you’re doing is wrong and unwise.”  Listen to them.  Examine yourself and your motives.  Allow them to be that trusted friend you need.

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BlogCultureFacing Adversity

Struck Down

by Ron Potter March 3, 2022

We’ve been looking at a text written over 2,000 years ago.  A partial reading of the text says that we are afflicted in every way, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down.  We now come to the last word in the sequence, Stuck Down.

  • Afflicted
  • Perplexed
  • Persecuted
  • Struck Down

Being Struck Down is Painful

While being persecuted seems very painful and personal, being stuck down seems to be the ultimate of pain and suffering.

Maybe you’ve been struck down in the past.  It might have been a baseball to the head that knocked you unconscious.  Maybe you didn’t see the low beam or branch.  These are very painful and physical.

I was never a fighter.  However, there was a time in high school when the school bully decided to pick me out of the crowd and make an example of me.  He was a couple of years older than me and much larger and stronger.  He slapped me hard on my left cheek.  It stung and brought water to my eyes and nearly knocked me out.  But when I recovered and just stood there, he didn’t like that.  So he struck me on the other cheek with similar results.  I guess at that point he decided he wasn’t going to be successful in either starting a fight or knocking me down so he simply walked away.

Years later a friend told me how impressed he was that I simply stood there and took it.  He thought it took real grit, self-control, and humility to accomplish.  I had felt almost ashamed for many years for not fighting back or defending myself and yet here was my friend telling me how impressed he was with the grit and strength that I showed during that moment.

Last Word of the Four

Being struck down seems to be the most destructive and painful of all of the four descriptions.  It can either be physical as in the example I gave or it can be emotional and maybe not even seen or noticed by others.  But it will feel as if you’ve been struck down physically when it happens.  Maybe it’s a simple word said by someone in a team meeting.  It may have been intentional or completely innocent but it feels as if you’ve been struck down.

Being struck down is painful and destructive.  It may even cause you to change who you are.  It can affect your character and your outlook on life.  And yet, it happens.

Dealing With Being Struck Down

There is no good way for dealing with the feeling of being struck down.  My only suggestion is to endure.  Remind yourself of who you are.  Fall back on your character and belief system.  You may have been struck down physically or emotionally.  Either way, endure.  Live through it.  Become stronger.  Grow.  The text says that it will happen.  We will be struck down.  In our lifetime, we will not avoid it.  At some point, we will be or feel like we’ve been struck down.


Read the next post in the series.
Facing Adversity
Afflicted in Every Way
Perplexed
Persecuted
Struck Down
Ancient Text
Regrets—Text to Corinthians
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BlogLeadership

Humility isn’t a Byproduct of Heroism, it’s a Precondition.

by Ron Potter January 20, 2022

I recently read an article by Sam Walker in the Wall Street Journal that had an amazing headline.  That headline: “In a Life-or-Death Crisis, Humility is Everything”

In the article Walker writes about:

  • Alfred Haynes, the pilot that brought the DC-10 to a landing after the rear engine blew up and took out all three of the planes independent hydraulic lines
  • Chesley Sullenberger, who ditched a plane in the Hudson River without a single fatality after losing two engines. (Tom Hanks made the movie “Sully” based on the accident.)
  • Luis Urzua, the forman at the Chilean mine cave-in that helped his team survive 10 weeks before a rescue could happen.

Humility was the Common Denominator

The common denominator in each of the cases was the humility of the leaders.

In the first example, Captain Haynes was faced with a hydraulic failure that engineers pegged at roughly a billion to one chance of happening.  When Haynes asked his flight engineer to look up the procedure for steering a DC-10 under these circumstances the flight engineer replied “There isn’t one.”  Haynes didn’t get angry, he just went to the next possible solution.  Capt. Haynes spoke calmly and clearly to ground controllers and even thanked them for their assistance.

Six days later, he was healthy enough to be wheeled not a press conference.  “There is no hero,” he said, “There is just a group of four people who did their job.”

He never took any personal credit.  He placed all the credit on his crew doing their job.  He was humble.

In the second example, Sully, in his first public statement said that after losing both engines and ditching his plane in the Hudson River without a single fatality said, “We were simply doing the jobs we were paid to do.”  He was humble.

In the last example of the Chilean mine cave-in, Luis Urzua, after being trapped below ground for ten weeks insisted on being the last man out when rescue finally came.  He was humble.

Humble Business Leaders

Sam Walker suggests that many of these celebrated leaders have a remarkable mix of courage and humility.  On the surface, these two words seem to be the opposite of each other.  Can you be courageous and humble at the same time?  Can you display courage while being humble?  Yes, you can!

In fact, it’s important that you exhibit and live both.  Most business leaders seldom face situations where they make life or death situations.  At least not in those terms.  But often leaders face situations where the work lives and livelihood of many of their employees lie in the balance.  It takes courage to make and then stick with those kinds of decisions.

Several years ago one of my clients faced that kind of decision.  They were going to have to terminate the jobs of a large percentage of employees.  It was a gut-wrenching decision.  This company had facilities all over the country.  The employees didn’t work in one location.  Based on that dispersion of employees around the country that would be losing their jobs, they decided to rent jets so that they could visit every location over the span of two days.

In those two days, they sat with the employees that were going to be impacted and listened to their feelings and concerns.  They didn’t explain why the decisions had to be made or the logic behind the decision.  They just listened.  After each meeting, the employees still felt bad about what they were facing but they also felt that had been listened to and understood.  They had experienced humble leaders who were making courageous decisions.  In the end, those employees moved on quicker and felt better about the culture of the company.  They had experienced humble leaders.

Courageous and Humble

It takes both.  Courageous decisions are often without the needed ingredient of humility.  In this case, humility requires listening and empathizing.  It also takes courage to provide both of those.

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