When you’re a solo business owner, it’s so important to have relationships like this with outcomes like these. And there are other roles where keeping close to others of your ‘species’ can prove invaluable.

The single parent. The Dad. The buck-stops-here Boss. The Church minister. The Youth Worker. The Creative type. For all of you, it’s very very easy to become isolated, unchallenged, unsupported, stale. If you’re feeling like that, I encourage you: go looking! Refresh those old contacts; join a group; have a beer or a lunch with someone else from your species.

Twice this year, I’ve run 8-week Dad groups in my local community, each with a different group of men. Both times, one man in each group said something to this effect: “I thought these things just happened in my family. I thought there was something wrong with me, with us. Now I now we’re normal and it happens everywhere. I’m a lot more relaxed at home and less stressed about how I’m doing as a Dad.”

Seek others of your species. We all need each other…

I am really enjoying his latest podcast series: Run Your Business like Gordon Ramsey.

Eye-catching title huh? I wasn’t disappointed when I listened to episode one: HSCS-001 – Pt1, Run your business like Gordon Ramsay

I recommend you do the same!

“Whatever we measure is really our mission“

In other words, you might say that you are committed to being a cheerful parent who makes his/her children feel appreciated and safe in the world. And yet your measurement of how well things are going at your house is all about noise levels (keeping them low) or how high the kids marks are at school compared to your brother’s kids.

Alternatively, you might be a manager or religious leader who quotes your mission statement about “bringing out the full potential in people”. And yet your measurement systems are all about the number of new clients or attenders your staff/congregation brought in this month.

What you are measuring in actual terms will determine the actions you take, the actions you applaud and those you denegrate, the investment of your time and money and emotional energy. You may just be pouring those last three investments into something that doesn’t ultimately make you or others happy/successful…

So. What’s the mission you actually aspire to (rather than the one you default to)? How could you change your measurement systems and indicators to focus the organisation’s attention and efforts toward that mission?

Ever played Chess?

In the greatest strategy game ever created, you don’t just roll the dice on your turn and move to the space indicated. You face multiple variations, possibilities, choices. You’re required to think carefully and creatively about every move you make.

When the half-decent chess-player considers moving a piece, they begin by looking at that piece in relation to every other piece on the board, friendly and hostile. They realise that both the piece and its possible moves have different effects at different stages of the game, that the piece’s value and behaviour depends on what’s happening at that moment.

The competent player considers the next move from many angles: “If I move my bishop to that space, what can attack me? What countermove will it provoke from my opponent? How does it open up space for me and the enemy? What advantage will it give me? What will it allow me to do on my next few moves? How will I protect myself?”

Now, if you’re a leader of some kind it would be easy to think of yourself as the chess-player and your team or colleagues or family as the pieces. I want you instead to imagine yourself as a piece on the board.

You are a piece that has the free will to make its own move. The forces that oppose you are waiting on that move before responding. The pieces allied with you will be affected by your move and will probably also move in response to it.

Your next move is as important as any other you have ever and will ever make. Please consider these thoughts and questions before you make it. (By the way, I’m not suggesting you go through this whole process for every other decision you make!)

1. What are the rules you must observe? How can you make these rules work for you?

2. OPTIONS: List all the possible moves you see you can make from here (even the crazy ones). Once you’ve listed all you see, answer these questions. If you “played” with a more aggressive style, what other moves would open up to you? What moves, if you played a more defensive style? A more structured style? A more unorthodox style? What if you played a game that was based on series of small moves rather large dramatic ones? What if you played more from the heart than from the head?

3. You may now have a sizeable list. Look at each potential move and answer questions like these:

• What specific advantage does it give me?
• Where does it leave me vulnerable?
• What possibilities might open up?
• What response are my opposing “forces” (personal or impersonal) likely to make? (“The auditors will have a coronary” “My tendency to worry will kick in” “My tired team may complain about more work and drag their heels”)
• How do I need to back myself up?
• Whose support do I need for this move?
• What am I certain it will cost me?
• How does this move line up with my overall vision, my goals, my integrity?
• Where does it lead to next?
• What benefit will it bring others?
• What do I need to consider in terms of timing this move for greatest effect?
• Do I need to break this down into smaller steps or is better enacted the way I’ve written it already?

4. Now which move looks best to take next?

Your move!

So begins Honda’s creative advertising (in the UK I think) for its revolutionised diesel engine. I’m not going to write anymore about Honda, because it’s the phrase that lead their campaign that caught my attention: Hate Something, Change Something, (Make Something Better).

What a great thought starter! If something bugs you, why just live with it? I don’t mean divorcing your husband because he snores. I mean, change the situation, or change the “it” if you can.

Even if you’ve adopted a Fransiscan philosophy-of-life (ie., “Help me to change the things I can, accept the things I can’t, etc”), there’s scope in every situation for some form of change, for an improvement.

What a fantastic difference it could make with those things that bring us pain and restriction if we stopped making excuses for them, if we stopped complaining about them, and put the energy into improving them.

What a wonderful difference it’d make to truly apply our strengths to the things we hate about our job or other responsibilities, just as the Honda engineer did. He couldn’t rid the world of the diesel engine, so he made it quieter, cleaner, tougher and more powerful [well, according to their spin he did ].

A friend’s grandfather used to tell him, “I always give the hardest job to the laziest person because they’ll find the fastest way to do it.”

Improvement. Innovation. Empowerment.

What do you hate? How could you change it? What strengths do you have that (when applied) could make it better?

A big thanks to BadDadRadio’s podcast for alerting me to this motto.

Deciphering the difference between the promises you do make and the promises you have made in a rash moment helps us to keep in integrity.

Take time out and stop to think if you can follow through with the promises you are making or renegotiate what you said you would do, so that you stay in integrity for yourself and for others.

For the rest of this short and practical article, click here.

80% of Companies Won’t Fail in 5 Years – Do you own a start-up business and hear the horror stories and statistics that tell you you’re probably doomed? Think again…

Operation Order – a terrific lesson from the US Army on effective event planning for the frazzled leader.

The Benefit of Mistakes – a B&B owner takes a blogging-detour from the normal recipes and weather reports to reflect on how mistakes often move us forward. Excerpt: “Each mistake also has the potential to take us on a tangent that we never would’ve taken had we not made that mistake, and more often that not, it’s those exact tangents that take us closer to the achievement of our dreams.”

And lastly, if you really just need a laugh or change of pace, try these sites.

1) To read wierd but true facts & stories, try This Is True for items like these:

• A man sued his doctor because he survived his cancer longer than the doctor predicted.
• Two robbers were in the process of their crime when one changed his mind and arrested the other.
• A woman had her husband’s ashes made into an egg timer when he died so he could still “help” in the kitchen.
• Only 68 of 200 Anglican priests polled could name all Ten Commandments, but half said they believed in space aliens.

2) A completely juvenile flash animation game.

3) If you have a strong stomach and enjoy calling outher people “wierd” or “stupid”, visit this Belly Button Fluff collector in Perth Western Australia. [Personally, I'd be really embarrassed to flaunt my fetish so!]

See? Something for everyone out there in cyberspace….

Remember when we were kids and ripping off that band-aid was such a trial? “I can’t do it: IT’S GONNA HURT!!!”

In my last Whetstone newsletter, I published a Laurie Beth Jones article on procrastination. In it, she made these points:

 We often choose the complicated ambling route … when if we just went straight at the challenges facing us, we’d have the problem beaten in no time.

Procrastination seems like a harmless and benign habit. But the truth is, procrastination is costly.

There is a time when the time is too late. Decisions delayed can cause major damage or heartache.

A recent post by Lisa Haneberg built on this subject for me, touching on it from another angle. In it, she describes actions we avoid because they downright scare us.

Quick moment of reflection: 

• Have you been continually avoiding things you want or need to do or say for some time now?
• Does it seem to you that they’ll bring you overwhelming pain or loss?
• Are you caught between recoiling from the prospect of pain and knowing it’s actually the best thing you can do?

While I’m not trying to minimise your challenge, it sounds a little like the band-aid, doesn’t it? Think about it. You have faced one of these moments before; you took the plunge; you discovered it either wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be or the benefits far outwieghed the costs! Sometimes the Nike philosophy (Just Do It) is the best approach…

Caveat: I’m not recommending recklessness or thoughtlessness. We’re not talking about telling your husband that you’ve had enough of his channel-surfing, and “either the TV goes or I go!“. I’m not suggesting you go postal at work. (Please don’t).

We are talking about things like

• being honest about your feelings,
• defending your boundaries,
• making a tough business decision,
• undertaking counselling,
• letting that troublesome-but-talented employee know they are on their final warning (whether or not they’re easily replaced),
• admitting you’re an alcoholic and entering rehab,
• returning to study…

… you get the drift.

We often look back on these “But I can’t do that” challenges at a later date and wonder “What was all that fuss about??”

Courage is the choice to believe that the pain of inaction is far worse than the pain of taking action.

One of my pet hates with my own society is its increasing tendency to play the blame game:

• “Something went wrong in my life. Whose fault is it?”
• “I didn’t get what I wanted; who can I make pay?”
• “Yes, I’m a bad-tempered egotistical pain-in-the-rear, but if you want to complain, go talk to my parents; I’m their handiwork.”
• “No, I didn’t make a mistake, it happened because I wasn’t trained properly or superbised”
• “SuperBised?? See I can’t even spell because no teacher took the time to help me do it propally!!”

and blah blah blah, on it goes.

The natural follow-on for many people unfortunately is “Who can I sue?” But I digress ….

Wayne Arthurs is a breath of fresh air for me. He is an older tennis player (Yeh! 35 is sooooo old – but then again he’s the oldest guy in this year Australian Open); as an older player, he’s still giving it his best shot to do as well as he can.  

But he’s also self-defined, circumspect and a gentleman.

Here’s what I mean. A simple injection for pain relief caused him (to quote a journalist)

“more hurt than he could ever have imagined. It got him bundled out of the Australian Open as his biggest moment in tennis beckoned.  Arthurs’ relief from nagging pain in his hip turned to heartache when he became one of the one-in-1000 patients to suffer an adverse reaction to the medication. His muscles went into spasm and he lost control of his right leg.”

Imagine it. You’re psyched up, ready to go, wondering if this your last hurrah and how far you can take it, and then 3 games in, you lose all feeling in one of your legs.

And so he retires from the match. Soon, he’s in the press conference, presumably still smarting emotionally from this blow to his career. 

When asked the typically journalistic question, “Do you put the blame on anybody” (which translated means, “here’s your chance, point the finger and give us a sensational by-line” ), Arthurs replies sincerely:

“I don’t blame the doctor, no. I’ve been told it’s a one-in-a-thousand thing. I’ve reacted to it like one in a thousand person would. I’m not putting blame on anybody.”

It may have gone unnoticed by many people, but for that answer and that attitude (if not for anything else, Wayne), my hat is off to you. You are a champion and role model and I wish you the kind of meaningful success in the year ahead that more than makes up for your loss.

What a great Australian.

I want to free what awaits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

I came across that poem in a course on designing better learning environments. It’s not just a piece of sentimentalism. It reminded me to be me - to embrace the way I think and speak and create and dream.

It reminded me of that great Olympic runner (celebrated in Chariots of Fire) Eric Liddell saying “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure”.

It reminded me that each of us has a distinctive genius that doesn’t always get an “airing”, but which needs focus and release…

Find your Voice.