Leader or not?

Leaders don’t let fear stop them

Leaders are people we can always remember as those who “just do it”.  They make things happen.  They never seem to have excuses to explain why they are not doing something.  They don’t see problems, they see opportunities.  They feel fear, just as we all do, they don’t operate from it.  They don’t let fear get the better of them and prevent their progress.  Are you a leader?  Or do you let fear (even small fears and hesitations) get in your way?

How do you view training?  Most of us probably don’t fear training, especially when it’s training that is aimed at improving our level of knowledge, skill or ability.  Many of us welcome it, but we all fear the work load we will face when we return.  That can turn a pleasant expansive experience into something that bogs us down.  What about training for your people – those who make you a success?

A leader does whatever possible to enhance those who work for himself.  A leader surrounds herself with people who are better and more capable, who make up for the leader’s own shortcomings.  A leader is aware of his shortcomings and actively seeks to balance them with strengths or improve.  Are you a leader who helps your people be better than you?  Or are you a leader who must grab the glory?  Are you one of those so-called leaders who must know it all, must control it all, must be the one calling the shots?

General George Paton, the famous US tank commander in WW2, once said words to the effect of, “never tell people how to do things, tell them what you want and let them surprise you with the results”.  He knew that people, relieved of controls and bindings, would be creative and productive, often delivering more than you expected – to your delight.  He was considered to be a great leader.  And he didn’t control – he was not a micro-manager.  He made sure his people could shine – and they did.

If you truly want your people to experience expansion and glory, why not encourage and support their training.  You may be well qualified and experienced.  Are they?  Can they outshine you?  If not, then you are missing an opportunity.

We hear many excuses for not doing training.  They range from just plain, “not interested,” through “oh, there’s no budget for that” and “that doesn’t fit our program” to “I’m already qualified”.

Why are you not interested?  Is there nothing to gain?  Are you and your people already doing perfectly?  Or are you afraid that someone might outshine you?

Why would you let a budget stop you from doing something that will likely have the effect of saving you money, or even making more for you?  Do you fear that you would choose training that is not going to be of benefit?  Do you fear that your employees are just out to cheat the company (their livelihood) and pick training just for fun?  Do you fear that you can’t turn new knowledge into something that drives value for your company?

Is your “program” perfect?  Has it considered all the possibilities?  Is is perhaps too conservative and you fear that someone may return from learning something new and raise the bar?  A bar that perhaps you set too low in the first instance?

And so what if you are already qualified.  What about your people?  Do they know as much as you?  Are they as capable as you?  What do you fear if they gain what you already have?

These, and many more, are just a few of the excuses we hear when people resist training suggestions.  Admittedly, not all training is beneficial.  Is an immediate and outright dismissal of an opportunity, without even exploring it more fully, really doing it and yourself justice?  Are you shutting out opportunities that are being placed before you?

We often resist what is good for us.  If you look around yourself in your workplace and see a situation that could be improved, know that you were a part in creating it and allowing it to exist.  You and others co-created it.  And you and others can co-create what it takes to set it right.  Resisting is only perpetuating the situation as it is.  Why not be open to ideas that can help you?  Why keep shooting yourself in the foot?

You may fear your own company bureaucracy.  We see a lot of that, particularly in larger companies with headquarters offshore somewhere.  The system won’t allow it or the red tape is too excessive or it will never get past the purchasing process.  With a bit of insight we can all see that we create what we fear by the mere act of giving it energy.  Resist something and you invite it in.  It’s as if the universe, like a dog, doesn’t understand that no means no.  Our excuses about never getting approvals, etc. are all about giving in to something you see as being more powerful  Henry Ford has a great saying – “whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right”.  He knew that the attitude you bring to a problem will reveal the direction you will take.

And if you are too beaten down by past experience to be positive, then dig back into those past events and really ask yourself honestly how you approached them.  Were you defeatist?  You probably were.  And you probably sustain that today too.  You’ve been giving your fear too much power.  And it’s been bringing you exactly what you don’t want.

Be positive and face those fears – do not give them power over you.  You choose.  You can see the cup as half full or half empty – which is your preference?

Who are we kidding?

Who are we kidding?

This morning I was inspired by death.  There was an article about a young girl – a teenager who lived near Toronto who hanged herself after taking drugs.  The drugs were meant to deal with “depression” – a diagnosed condition being treated by a doctor.  Yet it is clear from the outcome that her treatment only dealt with the symptoms, not the causes of the depression.  What is depression?  Along with a variety of geological, economic, climactic and other uses for the word I found (in Google’s online definition):

• a mental state characterized by a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity
• sad feelings of gloom and inadequacy

And I asked myself if a drug can possibly deal with these.  Of course not.  Mental states are brought on by the mind, not by chemicals.  We can all smile when only thinking about something that makes us happy, or we can move ourselves to tear by thinking of something sad.  Actors do it all the time to give us those tears on screen.  Sad feelings, indeed feelings of any sort, are brought on by the mind judging the body’s reactions to events it perceives.  All of this is the mind’s doing.  Drugs can only alter our ability to perceive, not what we perceive.

Doctors prescribe drugs all the time.  But do they deal with problems or symptoms?  Even drugs that help with clogged arteries – they may deal with the clogging, but they don’t deal with the source of the clogging – often an unhealthy life style.

OK – this is an asset management website.  Why is this relevant here?  We are often moved to solve “apparent problems” – realy the symptoms of some deeper underlying problem.  Underlying most of our problems are deeper issues just presenting themselves for solution.  They present themselves through lesser yet more immediately evident problems on the surface.  And our corporate culture, indeed our entire western civilization, seems to value the short term fixes over the longer term solutions.  We seem to be afraid to dig deeper and really deal with the deep underlying issues.  And that applies in our businesses as well as in our lives.  That young lady who took her life would very likely have been far better served to dig deeper into the causes of her depression rather than taking a drug to hide it.  She got the short term fix and the long term sentence.

What is it about our consciousness that takes us down that short term path to a quick fix that only hides the real problems?  Perhaps we just don’t love ourselves. Oh, we say we do, but do we really.  Did that young lady really love herself.  Did her family really love her?  Did her doctor really love her and her family?  Did he / she have a real love of helping, or only creating an illusion of helping?

And that happens in our businesses too.  Perhaps we don’t really love what we are doing as a business.  We may love our work (our job) within that context of the business, but do we really love the business?  Do we see the deeper contribution we are making to society, to humanity by doing our job?  Just as your heart is a part of supporting what you choose to do with your live, you are doing something in your business that contributes to whatever the business chooses.  That business is, after all, just a collection of individual people all choosing something together.  If we do see that deeper contribution, then are we inspired by it?  Do we really love it?  If not, are we really loving ourselves by being there and doing it?

Tough questions to ask and tough questions to answer.  Look at the implications.  You’ve just read those questions and come up with quick answers.  Don’t go back and over think this.  What are you going to do now, if you got an answer that truthfully reveals that you are not doing what is most loving for yourself?  Continue to do it?  Why?  Because you have a family to support?  We are masters at justifying what we choose after the fact.  Why not choose to love yourself first?  It starts there.  That simple choice will open you up to further answers that are more loving to yourself.  Being conscious of your choices is like the solution to a problem – a large part of the solution is in merely identifying the problem.  Then we are open to a solutioon.  And why not being with a choice to find a loving solution?

This applies at work too.  Let’s say we answer the above questions with “yes”.  We are inspired by what we do and the contribution we make at our work.  It is meaningful.  Terrific.  Yet you have problems at work – equipment that continually breaks down.  Underlying the technical problems are people problems.  Perhaps problems with the design, the installation, the quality of parts used, the rush to put it back into service the last time it broke down…  These are all people problems.  And underlying those are deeper systemic problems in the business.  Repeated problems are a chronic condition of the business, not just the equipment.  You can not solve these with the industrial equivalent of a drug – the rapid repair.  You are only making it go away for a short while.  It’s time to dig deeper.

Can our businesses make that leap?  Can they encourage long term solutions and digging deeper into the tough issues that are not amenable to short term fixes?  My answer is “yes”.  But it will take a shift in consciousness on the part of all of us as individuals.  As each one of us shifts our consciousness, others around us will notice.

I’ll use myself as an example.  If you have read this far and if this has touched you in some way.  I’ve started that shift in those around me.  I’d apprecaite it if you would just let me know that you felt something here.  With your help that can spread.  You have influence over those around you.  Collectively, our consciousness can shift to one that is truly loving to the self and that will spill over into our families and loved ones, our workplace and companies, eventually into all of society.

Love, Jim

On choosing mediocrity

Greetings – I put this blog entry on our business website and thought it might be worth sharing here too.  Note the feedback I got from a colleague just moments after posting it.

Businesses today are struggling with their costs and capabilities because of past “sins”.  It may not be evident in the board room either – executives just don’t seem to get it.  But on the shop floor, in the field and in factory settings around North America we hear a similar story.  It goes like this; “about 10 years ago we did all that but we stopped”.  So what happened?

In case after case we hear that past practices were quite successful.  The sort of methods and techniques we teach in our Uptime Training and in our Asset Management training were being done in the past.  Yet along the way, “resources” (usually meaning people) were cut.  In the early ’90′s we saw the emergence of the “re-engineering” craze.  Companies went overboard with staff reductions in the interest of cutting costs.  Somehow the original intent of re-engineering – to eliminate waste and streamline, was misunderstood and interpreted as an opportunity to shed staff and hence cut costs.  People became more of a commodity.  Loyalty plumeted – it’s almost non-existent in some industries today.  The manufacturing sector got the “lean” craze.  It was similar to “re-engineering” in its attempts to get rid of waste and excess.  Both are valid and excellent concepts when properly applied.  But application was anything but “proper”.  Consciousness had shifted in the direction of short term profit taking, get rich quick, don’t worry about the future, selfishly make profit today and hoard it for yourself, don’t worry about the future security of our children – they can take care of themselves.  We had set ourselves up for failure and it is our children that must now deal with the legacy being left.

Two years ago a colleague, Art Rice, CEO of Maintenance Technology, made a statement about “lean” at the IMEC 2008 conference in Toronto.  I don’t have the exact quote but he said something to the effect that “lean” has become “anorexic”.  And he was so right!  Companies had slimmed down, cut staff, cut training budgets, stopped investing in their own future to the point of becoming diseased shadows of their former selves.  And all in the interest of short term cost cutting.

And where are they today?  Baby boomers are retiring now.  Experience and the knowledge of the methods used to keep things running smoothly is disappearling.  Replacements are coming from a younger and very different generation – the children of the baby boomers.  Some older workers lament their poor work effort, lack of dedication and focus.  Although the numbers of boomers can be replaced, one for one, their work ethic (live to work) is being replaced with “work to live”.  I for one think the younger folks have it right to a degree – perhaps it is a bit overboard though.  Life is give and take, not all take.  We have yet to reach a happy medium.  Anyway, workforce experience, knowledge of the “plant” and well-honed skills is diminishing.  The replacements are often better educated, they lack experience, know only the theory of how the “plant” works and they are quick learners.  However, in the endeavor to cut costs, training and development spending was reduced to a bare minimum or even less.  Exploration of up to date methods stopped.  The methods through which knowledge (real useful knowledge, not just data and information) is transferred from experienced to younger are seldom exploited.  The result is that as boomers retire, the numbers of people needed will have to grow.  The very thing that the bean-counting types feared, is exactly what they are bringing on.  And the timing could not be worse.

We are headed towards mediocrity at an alarming pace.  The developing world with its well educated, less expensive and harder working workforce is catching up on our technological lead.  We are heavily reliant on technology and we’ve probably gone beyond our own ability to manage and leverage it fully.  We are slipping.  The developing world is catching up and surpassing us.  Only high fuel prices are keeping shipping costs high enough to protect North America from a flood of cheaper imports of equal or even better quality.  We are on a very slippery slope and we’ve done it to ourselves – we’ve chosen mediocrity.

The developing world is choosing expansion.  They have a lot to gain, little to lose.  They can take advantage of our technology and do so with cheaper resources.  And they started off doing it in companies that were originally North American based but looking for a cheaper source of labor.  That has helped the developing world – but it has done so at our cost.  While we were spending there, we stopped here.  We’ve helped others but drained our own capability.  We did not fill their cups from our overflow – we filled them from our lack.  We’ve reduced, they’ve expanded.  Good for them.  Yet who will help us?  Here we cannot rely on others – we must do it ourselves.

We need to work smarter.  Stop cutting costs in the relentless pursuit of short term gains to satisfy shareholders’ who have no real interest in the company other than it’s profits.  If businesses are to be sustainable they need to think and act sustainably.  Shed the short-termism.  Choose excellence.  Choose sustainability (and I don’t mean just green).  A major shift in business consciousness is needed – it is almost too late.

Feedback:

After reading this, a colleague who works for a large company provided the following feedback.  It’s so powerful, I’ve included it here to underscore the message:

Great article on Mediocrity, James, and as a Zoomer I totally agree.  There’s a middle ground between us (the boiled frogs) and the younger generation.  They have watched their parents give up life to keep that almighty job afloat.  They have seen their parents be downsized (or whatever term they are using these days) and witnessed the devastation this had caused their parents’ sense of identity.  The middle road has to be where family and self gains the footing to reclaim their sense of empowerment over their destination.  Actually, more then ever, it is time for spirituality (might have to call it something else, so it gets a chance) in the workplace to be offered to employees, to assist them to see themselves as the main priority in their own masterpiece of life.  Just started a class at work called “Sharing and Caring” which is gaining traction.  It starts with me presenting an idea like; “learning to disappoint people” and then the class contributes to the solutions.  It’s a small thing, but for me it helps a little bit with the suffering that I’m seeing all around me.  It pains me to see how people struggle to hang onto a job, with a boss who has no commitment to hanging onto them.  Comments coming from bosses like, “Even though you are a good performer, I know you’re the mother of two children and a husband who works shift, which makes you the centre of their universe; you need to let that go!”  Wow where can you go from there as an employee?

Just had to vent, thanks so much for this timely message, which I have passed along.

Who’s afraid?

Watching pennies (OK, maybe dollars).  Following all the rules – even if they are really stupid.  Participating in family events you don’t want to attend.  Pretending to be friends with someone you don’t really like.  Denying reality – especially when it only puts off something painful you really don’t want to deal with now.  And this list could go on and on.  Why do we do these things?

The simple answer is fear.  Fear doesn’t only mean that feeling we get when adrenalin is pumping over the terror we get when something really bad is about to happen.  You know that feeling – when your car is careening out of control with you in it, you are skiing down a slope too steep for your skills and you can’t stop, someone just pulled a gun out and is pointing in your general direction…  That is fear – and if measured on a fear scale it would be “terror”.  Up near the top.  But there are other fears that are more subtle.  We are so used to denying our own feelings, perhaps because we are bombarded constantly, that we’ve grown numb to the subtle feelings.  I know I have been there and I am now recovering.  Subtle fear is pervasive and so harmful.  We act on it all the time without even knowing we are doing it.

On the low end of the fear scale you might find “resistance” to anything.  Your boss asks you to do something you think is wrong, but you do it anyway.  You felt resistance to doing it because you were afraid of the consequences from doing something wrong (or stupid, or uncaring, etc.).  That resistance came from a more subtle fear.  OK – so that’s obvious.  What about a fear that many men share.  We won’t do “girly” things because we might appear less of a man.  Don’t like chick flicks?  Why not?  Many of them are truly good stories with an opportunity to let emotions emerge.  I love them.  Does that make me a prissy guy?  Maybe to some it does.  So what.  I am me, not what someone else prefers as his or her ideal image of a man.

When I remarried my new wife and I shared each others last names.  Hers is first followed by a hyphen and mine is second.  I felt fear over that.  Would I lose my identity?  Would people who have known me for years suddenly lose track of me?  Would I have to start all over building my professional reputation?  The fear was there and it felt real.  Now, some 5+ years later I’ve found that exactly the opposite has happened.  By not giving power to that fear I brought on a whole new set of experiences and they have all turned out positively.

Fear is your friend.  Fear is like a signpost showing you what is going to be “new” to you.  New experiences give you the opportunity to break from your past, your habits, your boredom, your judgments, your pain, etc.  Try something new.  Choose regardless of the fear.  That doesn’t mean go out and choose something harmful, unless of course that is your intent.  Choose something new, something that is a little bit scary at first.  Go ahead – try para-sailing.  Try scuba diving.  Go parachuting.  Take up skiing.  Ask that girl you’ve been secretly admiring out.  Tell someone close that you love them.  Have fun, even if it’s a bit naughty.  Go ahead – start living.  Fear will help you see what you are missing.  Go for it.

Have all the fear you can.  And then use it to choose something new.

Jim Reyes-Picknell, jim@choosefreely.com