Physiologically the brain is amazing, but real magic lies in your mind. Not just magic, but incredible power.

As Buddha said, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.”

Oscar Wilde believed that “A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.” I imagine he would be horrified at how many people have turned their thinking over to someone else and just follow blindly along.

Amos Bronson Alcott put it differently, but arrives at the same point. “Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.”

That may be true, but Bill Watterson offers up a warning, “Sometimes when I’m talking, my words can’t keep up with my thoughts. I wonder why we think faster than we speak. Probably so we can think twice.” It’s too bad that more of us don’t think twice, if we did we would probably speak less.

Another function of you magical mind is as host for your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

I tend to agree with Charles R. Swindoll that it’s the ‘A’ that has the greatest impact on what you do with and in your life. He said, “The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

That thought is one I repeat here over and over: if something is a product of your mind then it’s within your control and always your choice.

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: ѕrрhotogᴦaphy on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn

Carly Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard’s ex (to the great relief of people both internal and external) CEO is the latest to throw her hat in the ring, touting her corporate problem-solving skills; problem-making is more accurate.

So what do you do when you are booted out of your political position (or your term expires)? Go on the speaking circuit.

I realize that I may offend some of my readers, but to learn that George W. Bush is being paid $100K to speak for 40 minutes ($2500 per minute!) on “How to master the art of effective leadership” makes me ill. (Hat tip to Grant Lawrence at OEN for the heads up. I found his thoughts on the subject well worth reading.)

The next item is a great interview with Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard University, who, unlike her predecessor, recognizes that communication is the most critical action when leading an organization “with enormously distributed authority and many different sorts of constituencies, all of whom have a stake in that institution” and have no tolerance for any top-down management.

Authenticity is cited by many leadership gurus as absolutely necessary, but Professor Jim Heskett, my favorite Harvard voice, solicited reader responses to this question earlier this month, “Can the “masks of command” coexist with authentic leadership?” Beyond his summation be sure to scan through the comments for significant insights both pro and con.

Your comments—priceless http://www.leadershipturn.com/seize-your-leadership-day-

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit:  nono farahshila on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn

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

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: pshutterbug on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn

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?

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: Nieve44/La Luz on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn

(Please take a moment to share your thoughts in comments.)

Now click to see a great take on a common business problem

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: Sappymoosetree on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn

During the next two months people will be doing their best to tidy up all the loose ends, both business and personal, before the year ends.

Whether you do it yourself or have and executive team and thousands of employees, you can’t afford to focus only on wrapping up 2009; you need to plan for 2010.

The approach we use was drummed into my head since 1979 by Al Negrin, RampUp’s angel and chairman.

It’s called PBO (plans, budgets and objectives), but is very different from the old MBO (management by objective).

The critical act in PBO is to tie the plan to the objectives and to be sure that the budget, including headcount and other resources is adequate to support them.

For example, to achieve the objectives set for the marketing department requires increasing headcount by 5 people, but the budget for marketing only covers the cost of 3, so it becomes impossible for the manager to achieve the objectives.

Doing this actively sets your people up to fail—not the smartest approach for any manager.

And don’t sit quietly by if you receive an impossible set of objectives in the false hope that you can somehow protect yourself and your team.

In tight economies objectives often become more like wish lists; this is especially true after layoffs.

If your budgeting process is reality-based then there is no way to cut X% of a department’s headcount without reevaluating that department’s objectives as well as the company’s—it’s all connected.

Click these links to read a detailed explanation of PBO and how-to do it, and then tweak it to fit your own needs. If you need some help feel free to call me at 866.265.7267 or email miki@rapupsolutions.com, subject line about PBO (in case of filters).

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit:  ZedBee|Zoë Power on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn

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.

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: Bah Humbug on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn

“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.

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: Mark Coggins on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn

I’m always surprised when I go back, read one and it doesn’t make me run screaming from the screen.

So, here is Halloween 2009 for your reading pleasure. I hope you enjoy it, because I had a lot of fun writing it.

Are you attending a party tonight

wearing a costume that inspires fright?

Halloween’s a night for spooks,

for witches, demons and other kooks;

vampires, werewolves, serial killers and more—

all those types who are drenched in gore.

But if you really want to inspire fear

you can do it best with much simpler gear.

All you need is a designer suite, well-styled hair,

a fancy watch and executive chair.

The back story’s simple, you just have to choose

which character best fits your particular ruse.

Hedge fund manager, Wall Street or insurance exec

depends on whose world you are planning to wreck.

Have fun tonight and stay safe!

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: boydiz on flickr

Post from: Leadership Turn

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.

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: Warning Sign Generator

Post from: Leadership Turn