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At the risk of sounding repetitive, today my mind keeps wandering back to the topic of “choice.”

 I like talking about choices.  I do it with my kids all the time.  They learn choice and consequence.  That relationship is one of the most valuable things I can teach them.  Likewise, at work, I tend to do the same thing; I’m either talking about choice or pointing out consequences to the people with whom I work.  I hope I don’t come across as a pompous sort of dude.  I just think that it often helps to have an outside observer making links between things because we can get a little too close to a situation to really look at it objectively.  We’ve all been there.  I try to offer a different perspective.

 So, here is my perspective on choice in the workplace.  Life is the sum of choices.  We observe and live through crazy things at work.  Sometimes, they are cool.  Sometimes, they turn our stomachs.  Always, they represent opportunities for us to choose.  Nobody should have to live a life that forces them to compromise who they are.  So, don’t compromise.  Instead, study each situation, gather your facts, and then match what you’ve learned against what you believe.  At that point, choose. 

 Choose to stay or choose to leave.  Never, ever choose to settle.  You do no good to anyone…to me, to yourself, to your teammates, to your fellow human beings…if you compromise, settle, and warm a seat. Instead, commit.  Commit to this or that, but commit. 

And, as I like to say, then go and be awesome.

 

 

Maybe I haven’t been making myself very clear: you are a complete human being.  You are whole.  All the time.  There are no exceptions.  If you break up with a boyfriend, you’re whole.  If you lose a loved one to cancer, you are whole.  If your boss calls you into a meeting room with someone from HR…afterwards, you’re whole.  Even if you wither away under the curse of cancer, you are whole.

You are whole because the entirety of who you are is composed of every moment, every event, every breath you’ve taken in your lifetime.  You are everything that has happened to you, everything that is happening, and the unspoiled potential of everything that can happen.  You are your unique, luminous place in the Universe.  You are, as I said, whole.

Yes, you.  I am talking to you.

And you.

You, too.

But not him.  Kidding; him, too.

Nobody should have to suffer the indignity of having to live their life as if they were someone other than who they long to be.  Nobody should have to suffer the humiliation of having to compromise their core values just to make a living.  Nobody should have to kill themselves a little each day just to stay alive.

I sincerely hope that you don’t find yourself in this position.  If you do…I can only wish for you the strength and courage you’ll need to claim your right to be who you are.  That way, you’ll recognize yourself for what you truly are: complete.

Mr. Phelps got me thinking: it’s pretty damn hard to redefine yourself after you’ve gotten so used to defining yourself a certain way.  Mr. Phelps woke up one day, and some pretty important things about his life had changed.  Poof.  Just like that: different.

What I heard from Mr. Phelps was a sincere and profound question: now what?  No kidding, brother.  No what?

See, I’m just like Mr. Phelps; I woke up one day, and some pretty important things about my life had changed.  It was pretty disconcerting.  So, I went about my life, just like I did the day before, came home, had dinner, showered, went to bed, and let the whole thing start all over again.  Then I did that the next day.  And the next.  And the next.  Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.

Do you know what happened?

Abso-honkin’-lutely nothing, that’s what.  Nada.  Zilch.  Nothing happened.  It went on and on and on.

One day, I woke up and things were really different, honestly different.  I woke up and realized that I’d had enough.  No more zombie.  I couldn’t do it any more.  So, instead, I became miserable.  I was conscious but not conscious, you know?  It’s like I was aware of something uncomfortable on my chair but unwilling to stand up to do anything about it.

Now, I’m doing.  I’m doing, yet I’m still dragging my ass around wearing a frown and feeling sorry for myself.  I got caught in another damn rut.  Actually, it was more like…a trench…yeah, like a trench between two hills on a battlefield.  I got stuck between the charge down one hill and the charge up the next.  It was like…oh, I don’t know…maybe a DIP, Seth?  Something like that?

Yeah, well, tonight, my son told me he was worried about me because I’ve seemed so grumpy lately.  Worse, he’s afraid for me because I’ve seemed “so sad or something for a really long time.”  Yes, son.  You’re father isn’t entirely satisfied with himself right now.  There’s no question about that.  But, do you know what I told my boy?  I promised him that I was honestly, truly working on things right now to change that.  I promised him, PROMISED HIM, that I will create a way out of the dip and up into something different.

“Do you promise, Dad?” he asked.

“I promise.”

So, Mr. Phelps, tomorrow is a new day just waiting for you to define yourself however you choose.  Be bold, my friend; have courage.  You who you are meant to be.  You aren’t a different man than you were yesterday, not yet at least.  But…you can be.  Just think of all the space you have in your life now to write a completely new and different tune.  Go for it.  I hope I get to hear about it.

Sometimes, when you hold someone in high esteem, you might be a little nervous about meeting them.  You get nervous because you wonder, “Are they going to be cool?  Or are they going to be a big jerk?”  That’s not a question that we necessarily want answered, right?  Better to live with the doubt than have your image of that person tarnished.

My wife had that experience once.  She really liked this author and bought into what he was writing about.  Then she met him, and he was kind of standoffish.  As a well-known author, you probably get a lot of people trying to be your best pal, so I assume you get a little guarded with strangers.  You never know who’s going to ask for a handout or just be plain weird.  My wife was understanding, of course, but she was also a little bummed.  He wasn’t a big jerk or anything.  He just didn’t take the opportunity to engage.  And she was a volunteer at the event and everything.  

Well, I’m just a volunteer, too.  So…thank you, Seth, for not being a big jerk.  I appreciate your generosity and your authenticity.  

Today is one of those days during which I feel that I can take on the world.

I have the edge!

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=t:60,40&chs=250×100&chl=Ricardo|World

Change starts with a small group of people who are willing to go out on a limb to show others that their small, impossible idea will work.

 

Kerosene lamps kill and disfigure thousands of people in the developing world.  Kerosene is cheap in the short run, it is available, and it is proven.  It provides light at night.  The risk, although substantial, is accepted. 

 

Solar lamps do not kill or disfigure.  They are more expensive in the short run, they are not readily available, and, in the eyes of the “new” market in the developing world, they are unproven.  Why would you spend a significant portion of your resource, in this case income, on something that is unproven?  When every penny is worth an ounce of food, the incentive to risk is low.

 

D.Light and SociaLite are companies that provide solar lamps to people living in poverty in the developing world.  Wherever they introduce their product, they face an uphill climb.  They have to unseat the incumbent, kerosene, with a new, unproven and even magical solution that supposedly provides reliable light at night from the sun.  That’s quite a hurdle to overcome. 

 

But they do overcome it.  And when they do, something happens.  People begin to see how spending money today can save them money tomorrow.  By investing in solar lamps, a person can have light well into the night, and they can have it without the fear of accidental burning or even death.  They eliminate the additional heat generated by burning kerosene.  They eliminate the soot in their homes.  Parents no longer have to wonder if the soot that covers the faces of their children each morning will harm them in the long run.  All of that goes away.  It doesn’t take them long to realize that an extra, difficult investment today will reduce the cost of medical care in the future.  Lamps aren’t the only example.

 

Water Health International operates small water treatment stations throughout India.  When they started in India in 2005, they operated one station.  People were reluctant to pay money for water, a commodity they could get for free from the local well.  Government efforts at education, though, helped the majority of the public understand that unclean water could make them sick, so when WHI stuck with their operation, the cost of local medical care started to go down.  People were spending more on water, but they were spending less on medicine each month.  They were also spending less time away from work due to illness.  They started feeling better…just feeling better.  By the end of 2009, WHI had nearly 300 stations.  Over 200 additional stations are planned for 2010.  And, most shockingly, at least 2 other competitors were in operation by the end of 2009.  Their entrepreneurship created a whole new industry in the country.

 

When we perceive that we have a scarcity of a resource, we resist expending that resource on something that isn’t guaranteed.  Nobody wants to waste that which they believe is scarce.  We all want those guarantees.  Of course, there are no real guarantees.  Any guarantee is a fallacy, a falsehood.  All we really have is a perception that risk is mitigated.  That’s it.  Yet, we buy into guarantees all the time, as if a document or a signature is good for something.  Well, they aren’t.  There really are no guarantees. 

 

Change starts with a small group of people who are willing to go out on a limb to show others that their small, impossible idea will work.

 

If you want to launch your small, impossible idea, find your followers.  If you can’t find them, then build your own tribe.  Find the people that you trust.  Strengthen your network.  Your network is all you really have. 

 

Invest, not with money but with a piece of yourself.  It’s worth more than gold.  Your time and energy, your trust and friendship…those are things that no economic downturn can spoil.  You can’t ruin that when the market crashes.  Trust is the most valuable currency we have.  Trust is scarce.  We need more of it.  We need a lot more of it.  We need it to fuel our organizations at the macro level, and we need it to fuel our tribes at the micro level.   

 

Change starts with a small group of people who are willing to go out on a limb to show others that their small, impossible idea will work.

 

Be the one who starts, who isn’t afraid to push an idea forward.  Don’t go it alone.  Build a tribe.  Make a real change.  Make a small, impossible idea a reality.

Gantt charts make project managers so very happy.  Oh, there are many ways to skin the proverbial project management cat, but the Gantt chart…yeah, that an old favorite.  What’s a Gantt chart?  It’s a chart that helps visualize the timeline of a project.  This is a Gantt chart:

 

 

Why do project managers love them so much?  Easy: they are hard to misinterpret.  Sure, you can argue about the logic about the timeframes selected for each task, about the duration of each task, about the sequencing of tasks, about the dependencies between tasks…stuff like that…but you can’t really argue with a picture that has colors and words that clearly shows you when you’re starting and when the stuff is going to hit the fan.  You need a heavy does of denial to ignore a Gantt chart.

So try using one. I think we can agree that managing the stuff in life like a project is a good idea; and making lists of the stuff you have to do answering some basic, validated questions is a good idea; and using Gantt charts to help visually illustrate how all the pieces are going to fit together from start to finish is a good idea.  If all those things (or at least some of those things) hold true, then what on EARTH is keeping you from taking life by the horns, stripping away all the excuses, and getting meaningful stuff done?  

Yes, I know: progress is messy, tiring work.  Very tiring.  So is being afraid.  But do you know what?  You’re worth it.

Go ahead, make a plan, a list, and a chart.  Like someone recently said to me, if you don’t do the thing you are meant to do then all of the people who were meant to get something out of it WON’T have that opportunity.  

Apparently, there’s a Gantt chart for destiny.

When I was a wee-lad beginning my professional career, fresh out of college, people were still talking about something called “TQM” or “Totally Quality Management.”  Where I worked, managers were extolling the virtues of a 9-step approach to process improvement.  I got my hands on a copy of a document that contained the list, and I quickly typed up a copy to keep on my PC.

Fast forward a decade and change to last week when I was sifting through all the e-clutter contained in my vast and labyrithine data folder structure at work.  What did I find in the bowels of my system?  The 9-step list, sans original context.  Amazingly, and this is as much a testament to Demming’s original ideas as anything else, this process still holds water.  Seriously, it’s a good list!  Of course, today this sort of process seems intuitive because the basic approach has seen many iterations in the time since TQM hit the height of its popularity.  Still, if you don’t already have a process that you use, maybe, just maybe, this dusty old list might come in handy!

 

The Nine Step Approach to Work

 

  

1.    Identify the Purpose

 

2.    Identify the Customer (s)

 

3.    Identify the Requirements

 

4.    Plan an Approach

 

5.    Select Measurements

 

6.    Set Goals

 

7.    Take Action

 

8.    Evaluate Results

 

9.    Repeat For Continuous Improvements

 

I probably should have been more productive today, but I really didn’t feel like it.  That’s a shame, really, because the alternative is to not continue to try and crush lots of hours of to-do into fewer hours of actual-do.  Basic project management problem: too many tasks, too few resources.

The key is in how you measure your resources, though.  That, and how you define “too many.”

In this case, “too many” really means “a bit too many so I don’t really know where to start” which translates into “hey, I haven’t watched ‘Friends’ in a REALLY long time!”  Or, in simpler terms, procrastination.

Ah, yes.  Procrastination!  He is the very good friend of Exhausted.  Together, the two of them make a formidable pair.  Unfortunately, they are pairing and being formidable all over my to-do list.

So, getting back to PM 101, if you have a great big body of work to get done, then figure out what all the pieces are and starting managing to them.  Simple enough.  The hard part is the doing.  I’ll need a little help there, but I know just where to find that help.  Works out well for me.

So, in summary: if you have a great big thing to tackle, approach it like a project.  Break the big thing into smaller things, manage the little things to completion, and find someone to help you.  “Help” can take any form: from cheerleader to mentor to hired gun.  Regardless of who or how many, another body/mind to put to the tasks at hand will help.

It’s not rocket science.  But, like every good rocket, you’ll need some fuel…

Some chapters seem to go on forever.  It isn’t until you are at the end of the chapter that you realize how long it really was.  There is irony in the fact that you don’t know you are taking the long view until you stop to take the long view.

Viva Yogi Bera.

So, I find a lesson in that realization.  Every view is a long view.  Every chapter has the potential to go on indefinitely.  As in writing, in life all chapters end with punctuation of some kind.  Period.  Exclamation.  Question mark.  It doesn’t matter.  There is always something to mark the end.  And the end of a chapter is the end of a chapter simply because that’s where the author chose to end it.  

Get it?  

YOU are the author.  Each chapter ends when you CHOOSE to let it end.  Nothing goes on indefinitely so long as you determine where the ending should go.  If you wait for someone else to end it, you’ll wind up coming to the end of the book, if you catch my meaning.  We author with the assistance of the Editor, but, in the end, the book belongs to us.

So, this chapter ends because I choose for it to end.  The next chapter has already begun.