Knowledge vs Wisdom & what to keep

In a recent HR seminar I entered into a discussion about layoffs and making the decision between the senior employee who gets paid more, and the two interns who get paid little or nothing.

The decision usually comes down to dollars, and that with letting go of one person, the company saves a larger percentage of their labor budget, and keeps several more "flexible" employees.

This is an all too common situation and I understand some of the mentality. It looks good on paper, and the younger employees are also usually more adaptable to schedule changes, overtime, and being told what to do. So they cut the more experienced employee.

And in turn they cut out their knowledge base. Yes, I know that the college graduates have the "new" knowledge. And perhaps they work a bit faster and with less complaint but they also lack the ability to adapt to unknown situation by pulling from years of experience and resources.

I went to the hardware store to figure out how to reattach my daughter's door. It was falling off the hinges and the wood around the screw was so stripped that I could pull out the screws with my fingers. The first person I ran into at the store was no more than 28, maybe. The advice given to me was sound, get some wood filler, a bonding agent that will fill the hole and act like wood one it cures. Very good, so off I go down the aisles looking for wood filler.

In my journey I come across an old man. I am not saying this to be ageist, he was a classic old man with glasses on the end of his nose, a slow saunter to his step and very gray hair. He asked me what i was looking for and I sighed and re-explained my situation. He smiled and said, "Have you tried using a matchstick?"
Me - "Huh?"
"Wood filler might work, but most likely when you try to drive a screw through it, the filler will crack loose and just turn with the screw. Just jam a matchstick or two in the hole and when you put the screw in, the wood will expand and fill the hole."

I went home, jammed a matchstick in each hole and the door is as good as new. Saved me material, sticky mess, and curing time.

So when you are thinking about getting rid of that more senior employee in exchange for your two less expensive kids... Think about the holes you need filled that just need a matchstick.

Read More Here.

The Value of Perspective

I ran cross country in high school and the longer races on the track team. I was never competitive, I mostly enjoyed the team spirit and the challenge of completing a 3 or 5 mile run. I recall one meet where they needed another person to compete in the 3200 meter race or our star performer would not have a chance to qualify for the state competitions. I was fairly ill and had already done the 1600 but I figured I could walk it if I had to, the point was that someone from our team simply go around the track 8 times. By the 5th time around, I had already been lapped by a few of the front runners and I was seriously questioning my decision. Usually when I ran a long race, I would pace myself throughout and then put everything I had into the last 100 meters. I made the decision that I would not do that this time, as I made my way around the final curve of the track, since I was the only person left on the track by this point. But instinct won over and as I crossed the 100 meter line on the track, I automatically kicked it into high gear, which wasn't very high by that point. As I worked to correct this error and slow down, the crowd in the stands began to stand, cheer, and clap for me. My instinctive push had inspired them to cheer me on and their cheering inspired me to continue.

When I think about working in the nonprofit world, I often compare it to my experiences as a runner. Lasting social change is created through consistency, not sporadically applied passion. It's a marathon, not a mad dash to finish line, and if we want to be effective, we need to remember that. We often lose our strongest people because they burn themselves out trying to sprint the 26 miles of the marathon. Keeping that perspective, understanding that if we work ourselves so hard that we burn out we won't get where we want to go, is an invaluable part of what we do in the nonprofit sector.

The Opposite of Happiness is...

Boredom. Not sadness. This is taken from "The 4-Hour Workweek" which, while I am thoroughly enjoying the read, had some flaws and some brilliant revelations. More to follow in a complete review for BAHRA.

One of the shining elements of the book is its focus on making your NOW enjoyable instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you, or for some magical chance element (lottery, retirement, inheritance, leprechaun, etc.)

We spend far too much time in our jobs to be so miserable all the time. And should you be unable to reduce the actual time you spend in your office to 4 hours a week, perhaps you should think about transforming your dreaded drive to work, and your cubicle of desolation, to places you actually like to be.

Give Yourself A Raise

It all comes down to perspective, but seriously think about this before you dismiss it as some hair-brained, granola ideal. Ride your bike.

Save over $500 per month.

It happens so fast. First you just start driving less. Using your bike on occasion and you that your monthly gas bill has dropped by let's say $100. That's less than 2 tanks of gas infind today's market. Just ride your bike enough to eliminate 2 tanks for gas. If you are currently driving an SUV, this will be even faster.

OK, So now that you're riding once a week you should notice that you are more awake when you get to work, you have more energy in what you do and you are saving money. All these things feel good. So you ride more often. You save more money.

Give it a few months at this level. If you have a gym membership (that you probably don't use enough to get the value from it) then you've just put yourself in a place to save that money too.

Now you have reduced your gas bill and your maintenance costs. Commute driving is the worst kind of driving for your car, and a reduction of this kind will save your brakes, your clutch, your oil AND your sanity. In a short while you've just given yourself several hundred dollars a month extra to spend. But WAIT, there's more!

If you can go this far, then perhaps you can go a little farther... How many cars do you have in your family? Do you and your partner both have one? If you have kids is there one for them? How much are you paying a month in insurance?
Why not get rid of one of those cars?
You've now saved gas, insurance, maintenance and your gym membership while simultaneously increasing your energy and improving your health.
Well Done!

Of course, bicycling isn't the only way to give yourself a raise. More to follow...

Easier Said Than Done...

Our business coach is consistently telling me to set my situation up so that I cannot fail--to see success as a set of very simple reasonable goals that WILL happen, and anything in addition to that as just icing on the cake. Now, as a teacher of such ideals you'd think I would have this down pat, but I do not. I find it quite challenging to do a job, feel just okay about it, and go out and celebrate a success. Last week I was shown why.

I did a presentation that I did not feel was my strongest performance. It wasn't bad, but I didn't walk away going, "YEAH! I nailed that!" I left with a feeling of acceptance and a desire to do better the next time.

A few days later I received a phone call about the presentation and an invitation to make a proposal for a major speaking engagement. I guess it WAS a success after all. We often hold ourselves to standards that are not easily achieved, especially when we feel passionate about something. That feeling makes us far more critical than others tend to be.

Moral of the story: Set simple, fool-proof goals for success; the rest is just gravy. Thanks, Jack.

I Fell into the Generaton Gap, HELP!

While researching a presentation for next week I came across this clever quiz from Success Performance Solutions about generation gaps in the office. I thought it would be a good thing to share with you. I found the quiz enjoyable because it doesn't just ask you questions, it also provides an explanation in the answers. It's good to know WHY you are wrong, not just that you are. :)

I, myself, am right on the cusp of the X/Y gap and find my loyalties doubly split. Being raised in a home with one of the Baby Boomers who fully equated time and success in the workplace with personal achievement, I had a solid belief that a shirt and tie were required at all times, and that more time in the office was time better spent. My, how that changed when I started working with Microsoft employees and their new generation approach to the whole corporate schema. The entire Seattle area really challenged a lot of people's perspective about what "professional" was.

The past few decades have been an interesting road in learning the nuances of training and managing teams with such gaps in generations and work ethics. Diversity education isn't just about race and religion, it's about culture, and culture has more variables than just where you were raised. Age does, indeed, make a difference. Hopefully, we will see more trainers take the generation gap into consideration when addressing the diversity issues in an organization.

Monsters are not real

My daughter is still afraid of the dark. She doesn't like it when it's too dark outside, or in her room. Often she asks me to help with her issue and the other day it came to me that I cannot make it less dark for her. Darkness is not a tangible thing. It is a name we have given to the absence of light. And when there is not enough light, she gives the darkness power and focuses on what could be "in the dark". By focusing on the monsters in the dark, she keeps herself from actually getting to the root of the problem. She feels more comfortable, with more light.

I see this in business all the time. Managers constantly trying to get rid of the bottlenecks, or wanting to fix the negative attitudes of employees. Often we get so focused on the elimination of negative issues that we fail to recognise that often it is not the abundance of something negative, but the absence of the positive that is causing the issue. Instead of eliminating bottlenecks, increase efficiency. Try to increase happiness and satisfaction, not decrease negative attitude.

Most people respond better to positive reinforcement. I know if my boss told me that I needed to "lose the bad attitude", that would respond much less favorably that if she said something like, "You need to find a way to increase your satisfaction at work." The end goal is the same, but by increasing happiness, it naturally decreases negative attitude. Being told to remove a bad behavior, can often just leave a void that gets filled with apathy, more bad attitude, or sometimes a false sense of satisfaction. There is no direction to get better, just to stop what is being done.

I want my daughter to focus on the light in her world. I want her to find ways to carry light with her and banish the monsters from her mind. I cannot take away the darkness, but I can get her a flashlight. Do you have one?