Self Discipline–Why You Can Never Reach Me Instantly

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus. - Alexander Graham Bell

We use our gadgets for distraction and entertainment. We use them to avoid work while giving the impression that we're actually working hard. - Meghan Daum

The moment of drifting into thought has been so clipped by modern technology. Our lives are filled with distraction with smartphones and all the rest. People are so locked into not being present. - Glen Hansard

I have a confession to make to the many people who wonder what the secret is to getting me to answer my phone.

If you’re not in my calendar today, then don’t bother calling / SMS’ing me if you expect an immediate reply / comment.  I won’t even know you called me until the end of the day.

In our world of always being connected, always reachable, I have noticed that a lot of people who complain that they never get anything done appear to exist to be at the beck and call of everyone around them, whether it be via phone call, SMS, Facebook, Twitter or whatever the current distraction du jour is.

That’s fine if you believe that you exist only for the needs of others or that you are willing to sacrifice your priorities in order to meet everyone else’s.

However, if you believe you exist to serve a Greater Purpose, using your strengths, gifts and talents to the greatest potential possible, you cannot exist this way at all.

When I plan my day (right after my Quiet Hour), I note who needs to call me that day and I set up my phone to allow calls and SMS to come in from those people or people associated with them.

Family members, my closest friends and colleagues / friends who are currently in trouble and need support are always on this allowed list.

If you didn’t make it to that list for the day, when you call or SMS me, you will be redirected.  I won’t even be aware you reached out until the end of the day when I do my end-of-day wind-down.

While many have told me that this is unfair or uncaring for the people who might want to reach out to say hi, to ask advice or to complain incessantly about something they have no interest in addressing themselves (using me as the whipping post for their complaints), I reply to the criticism with these observations:

If I exist to be everyone else’s entertainment, company, source of knowledge or whipping post, at what point do I get to focus on who I am and why I exist?

If I have to be at everyone else’s beck and call “just because” but the other person reserves the right to reject speaking to me because they are busy or don’t feel like chatting, where is the fairness and balance in this exchange?

If I allow everyone else to monopolize my time, who is to blame when my work / play doesn’t get completed to my satisfaction or for the needs of someone else – the people who called me or the person (me) who allowed them to overrun my day?

Is my ego that weak that my sense of worthiness and self-value is established by the number of people who reach out to me?

If it takes me 20 minutes to get back on track after a distraction, how much work can I really get done if I allow distractions to flow in through the day?

How respectful am I to you (or to someone else) if I keep pausing myself or interrupting them to check my phone?

Do the interruptions contribute to my day or do they just burn time that can never be reclaimed?

I chose one person in particular who didn’t understand any of these ideas (he called them selfish) and I called him daily “just to chat”.

After a few days, he understood, but not before getting angry with me first.  After he calmed down, he got it.

According to my mobile carrier, my phone sends / receives 22,000+ SMS messages a month.  I use SMS more than voice (unless the person I am interacting with prefers voice chats) because I’m busy and focused on meeting my goals as well as serving the needs of the people around me.  I keep communication brief, direct and fact-focused.  People not used to this eventually come to appreciate it and often adopt the same approach themselves.

If you choose to spread yourself across your entire network without any sense of focus or discipline, how do you expect to meet your goals or the goals / needs of those whom you serve (unless you don’t have any goals, in which case wasting your time or having it wasted for you won’t feel like a crime to you)?.

By the way, many times when people call you to kill time, there is a possibility that you were the last person available to them.  How does it feel knowing that your time is of such little value to them that spending time with you is only slightly better to someone than having absolutely nothing to do at all or that they called you simply because they were bored (regardless of what is happening in your day)?

The Bottom Line

The people who complain the most about not having enough time to get things done are often the same ones who have no sense of focus or prioritization in how they use their time or how they allow others to use it.  They also don’t care if / how they waste the time of others.

Those of us who have the discipline to protect our time / results by shutting out distractions believe that we don’t have the time to complain and we don’t have the right to tie up other people’s time “just because” (since we don’t like them doing that to us). We’re too busy being grounded in gratitude to have the opportunity to create and collaborate and we are focused on creating results (whether for work or for play).

And besides, if I have a complaint to make, making it to someone who can do nothing about it infects two people with a negative attitude (instead of one) and meanwhile, my problem still exists.  On top of that, the person whom I have just infected is now distracted, unproductive or spreading my negativity outwards like ripples in a pond.

We all have 24 hours in a day.

Do you use those 24 hours for balanced work / play / learning / sharing / loving effectively, do you waste them or even worse, do you allow someone else to steal them from you?

Are you sure?

I’d love to hear your thoughts but don’t bother calling / SMS’ing me to tell me unless you know that you’re on my calendar today!

In service and servanthood – create a great day for yourself and others because merely having one is too passive an experience.

Harry

PS When I do entertain the complaints of others, I remind them that I am a “touch-once” person.  When a problem comes up, we can avoid it, talk about it or do whatever we want with it.  However, if we don’t adopt a “touch-once” policy and address it as soon as it comes up, it will always be there tomorrow.

So when someone comes to me with a complaint or they are seeking advice, they can only bring it up once.  If they want to discuss the same topic later without having tried to resolve it, I shut them down.  Lack of intention or effort on their part is not an excuse to burn up my time.

If we don’t focus on solving problems at the earliest opportunity, we may find we don’t have much energy / time left to address opportunities for creating and collaborating because we’re too busy being burdened down by the noise of unresolved problems.

And that only leads to more complaining.

Strategic Planning, Execution and Making Chili

Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort. - Paul J. Meyer

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing. - Thomas A. Edison

Failure frustrates me.

Actually, it’s not failure itself that frustrates me.

It’s how people fall into failure.

In many cases (not all), people are not victims of failure but instead, fall into it, earn it or deserve it because of poor planning or execution.  People like to blame their company failure on poor market conditions (even though other companies in the same space thrive under the same conditions), external events that knocked them over (when they should have seen them coming and had contingency plans), their refusal to accept reality (when reality couldn’t care less about unrealistic dreams), their phenomenal ego and the like.

And THAT’S what frustrates me – the avoidable failures.

A few examples ….

1. The company that, despite my pleas to them to define strategic and tactical roadmaps around measurable outcomes, went off and spent a couple of million creating something only to discover that they hadn’t defined what was really needed.  It was the only money that they had in the bank and now they are in trouble and because they are in reactive survival mode, they are once again scrambling around without a plan, having not learned the first time.

2. The company that, on its last financial legs, made an impressive pitch to investors (including myself) and secured $2 million in funding.  All that was needed were a couple of financial statements which were promised in 5 days.  When the 5 days had elapsed and the documents were requested, company representatives admitted to chasing a newer shiny object, a potential $25,000 sale so that they could pay for their upcoming Christmas party and therefore financials to investors would be delayed.  When reminded that this priority selection didn’t make sense, the response back was a very long email outlining how  “you don’t understand us”, “we are fighters”, blah blah blah.  In demonstrating lack of communication, lack of priority selection (Christmas party over company survival), lack of humility (“you don’t understand our better way of choosing short term entertainment over long term success”) and the like, the company lost a life-saving investment and has reverted back to struggling and inevitable collapse.

3. The company whose senior executive can’t pass a single due diligence exercise, can’t back up his claimed background in the military and is burning every relationship (and dollar) in sight and yet people who have been warned continue to follow him blindly.  Sadly, a lot of innocent people get hurt in such situations.

Strategic planning and effective execution is everything in my world and if you have done everything you can and things go wrong anyway, people can find little fault in failure.

But for the afore mentioned examples, failure is not only inevitable, it is, sadly (and perhaps this sounds mean), deserved.

A Different Way

One of my favorite techniques for determining strategic and tactical direction is by using a process called backcasting (a process that begins with starting at the end-result and working backwards to determine the right tasks to do, when they need to be accomplished and what resources are needed to accomplish them).

While many people are happy to go gallivanting off before they actually know what they are doing, I am not one of those.  I insist, to the intense frustration of many people, that I can’t move on a project until I know where we are going, how we are getting there and what we need to get there and then answering the whole kit and kaboodle with the questions Why? and How do We Know?.

I have mused upon this many times, including:

• Backcasting–Avoiding Disaster in Government and Business (a paper I did at Stanford)
• Why Your Business Really Failed (a whimsical look at failure)
• Strategy and Degrees of Insanity (another whimsical look at how people who aren’t strategic often end up failing)

So when making a pot of sweet and spicy chili today amidst teaching some of my team members the art of backcasting, a thought dawned on me.

Why not mesh the two together and teach them a backcasting exercise under the guise of creating a delicious meal for the guys at the office?

What was born was this backcasting mindmap showing how to use backcasting in a typical scenario (in this case, making sweet and spicy chili).  The mindmap is available here, free of charge, no email address required, blah blah blah!

The first three pages contain an explanation of the backcasting process for those who like a deep-dive, techie explanation.

The fourth page is an application of the backcasting process to create sweet and spicy chili.

The fifth page is the original recipe in plain English for those who couldn’t care less about stuff that excites the techie crowd.

Today’s little exercise reminded me of something.

Every day provides opportunities to convert mundane activities into learning opportunities.

How open are you to creating or participating in such opportunities?

After all, an opportunity missed is an opportunity lost (or wasted).

PS Eagle-eyed techie guys will notice on my backcast that the measurable (and final) outcome was the chili itself when technically, the last step is cleaning the dishes.  I would like to counter their suggestion of an error in the diagram with my assertion that I’m the strategy guy and architect – cleaning up the mess is someone else’s business (inside joke).

The Bottom Line

Failure rarely comes by accident, is rarely unavoidable and is even more rarely unpredictable.

To believe otherwise is setting yourself up for failure which inevitably becomes a success opportunity for someone else.

And no matter how beautiful the strategy looks, the following is also true:

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" -Winston Churchill

Which side of the failure / success equation would you rather be on?

Intelligent strategy and tactics are an art and a science.

So is making good chili.

Do you do what is necessary to create success, including ensuring that the right strategic and tactical roadmaps have been created, expressed and agreed upon?

Are you sure?

How do you know?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Note: The backcast mindmap with the chili recipe can be found here. If you would like the backcast mindmap without the chili recipe, it can be found here.

The Power of the Magical Geranium

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another. - Napoleon Hill

The #1206 “fiction” series continues …

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Abigail sat in the deserted coffee shop and idly played with her coffee cup.  She had had a full week and despite the feeling of being very busy, she somehow felt that she had accomplished very little if anything useful.

“Rough week, huh?”, asked a voice beside her.

Abigail jumped, unaware that anyone had entered the empty coffee shop.

She glanced up to see a casually dressed, clean cut man of indeterminate age smiling down at her.

“May I?”, he asked, gesturing towards the chair across the table from her.

“Oh great”, Abigail thought, “I just want to be left alone.”

Before she could turn him down, he smiled and as if reading her mind, said, “You probably prefer to be left alone” and then sat down anyway.

Abigail was too tired to protest and shrugged her shoulders in silent acquiescence.

“Rough week?”, the stranger asked again, staring at her intently but gently.

“I guess so”, replied Abigail, “It just didn’t go the way I had planned and the many things I meant to accomplish remain unfinished.”

“I see”, replied the stranger, “Were these things that you meant to accomplish or that you were meant to accomplish?”

Abigail frowned in confusion, too tired to untangle the question that the stranger asked her.

“I’m not sure what you mean”, she replied, lost in confusion and fatigue.

The stranger smiled.  “Before I answer the question, I would like to tell you a story if I may”, he said.

Without waiting for permission from Abigail, he began to tell the story.

“There was once a family who lived in poverty, with every part of their Life being a struggle.  One day, a neighbor brought a flower over to Mrs. Smith, the lady of the house, and as she gave it to her, she said, ‘This is a magical geranium.  It will change your Life.’  ‘How will it do that?’, asked Mrs. Smith to which the neighbor smiled and replied, ‘You will see.’ and she left.”

“Mrs. Smith shrugged, placed the geranium on the dining room table and went about her chores.  A little while later, she was staring at the table and realized how cluttered it looked with the beautiful red flower sitting in the center.  ‘This won’t do’, she muttered as she proceeded to clean the table.  After the table was properly cleaned, she thought it made the dining room look pretty shabby and so she cleaned the entire room.”

The stranger paused, intently watching Abigail’s reaction but she said nothing as she listened.

The stranger continued.

“After Mrs. Smith had cleaned the dining room, she felt that the kitchen was too dirty in relation to the wonderfully clean dining room and so she cleaned the kitchen until it was spotless.  Seeing that the hour was late and that dinner preparation should be under way, she thought ‘I must create a meal that is worthy of this kitchen’ and though the cupboards were very lean, she put more effort into creating the meal than she had done in her living memory.  She placed the meal on the table with her best dishes and called the family to dinner.”

“When the meal was ready, she called the family to dinner and was appalled at their state of dress.  ‘There is no way you are sitting at this table dressed like that’, she said sternly and sent them upstairs to clean up, insisting that they wear the best clothing they had.”

“A short while later, her family came back downstairs and were seated around the table.  Her husband gazed at the splendor before him and looked at his wife, seeing her beauty in a way he had never seen before.  ‘What is happening here?’, he asked as he marvelled at the clean house, the incredible meal, his beautiful wife and his wonderful children.”

“’I don’t know’, she said, ‘It all started with this magical geranium’ and she gestured towards the flower in the middle of the table.

“The family ate in wonder and the evening passed with the family engaged in more conversation than any of them could remember.  The next morning, Mr. Smith got up earlier than normal, shaved and put on his best clothing.  ‘What are you doing?’, Mrs. Smith asked.  Mr. Smith shrugged, smiled and then said, ‘Our meal last night reminded me that you and our kids are worthy of better than I have provided so I am on my way to look for a better job that honors all of you.’  He gave her a kiss on the cheek, went downstairs and left the house.  She could hear him whistling as he walked down the street towards the bus stop.  Walking downstairs into the dining room, she saw the geranium …. and she wondered.”

The stranger stopped telling his story, leaned back and waited for Abigail to comment.

“I don’t get it”, Abigail mumbled, “What does my busy week have to do with flowers?”

“Ahhhhh”, the stranger said as he smiled, “You missed the key point.  It’s more than just about flowers.  In fact, Abigail, I am suggesting that you have been the magic geranium in the lives of others.”

Abigail frowned in confusion but before she could comment, the stranger continued his thought.  He recounted different things she had done for others this week, some insignificant and some more impactful.

“How does he know this?”, she thought but before she could ask him, he looked at her and said, “That is why I asked you if your to-do list for the week was made up of things that you meant to accomplish or that you were meant to accomplish.  Sometimes it is the former but sometimes, possibly more than you realize, it is the latter.  Unfortunately, we measure the success and productivity of our week by the former while the latter is often more impactful.”

Abigail stared into the eyes of the stranger.  His gaze was deep and piercing but gentle and she felt her eyes well up as what he had said dawned on her.

She started to speak but he gently held up a hand and interrupted her.  “Don’t speak, Abigail”, he said gently, “Reflect on this for a while and then decide what it means to you.”

Abigail swallowed the lump in her throat and then, feeling a little awkward about crying in front of a stranger, stood up and told him that she needed to compose herself. 

She walked into the bathroom, splashed some water on her face and stared at herself in the mirror.  He was right – her priorities had been wrong all along.

Straightening up her clothing, she walked back out into the coffee shop.  Her brow furrowed in puzzlement when she realized that the stranger was gone.

She turned to the person behind the counter and asked, “Did the gentleman leave?”

“What gentleman?”, replied the young man, “Miss, we’ve been closed for over an hour.  I locked the door but I didn’t want to disturb you so I just left you alone.  No one has come or gone in the last hour.”

Abigail was confused and stared at the table, her head spinning as she wondered what had happened.

“How did he know what I did for others this week?”, she pondered.

As she wondered about this, something else dawned on her.

“How did he know my name?”

To be continued.

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© 2015 – Harry Tucker – All Rights Reserved

Background

The story of the magical geranium, of which I presented a very abridged version of, was a story I remember as a child.  The story was one of many in a book entitled Read Aloud Funny Stories, published in 1958.  The book can be found in used condition here.

Many people I encounter often express the results of their week in terms of how busy they were, how productive they were, etc.  As a long time Wall St’er, I do the same.

As someone who is measured by results (and who measures himself by results), I am often very self-critical in regards to what I believe I have accomplished in a day or a week.  It is a sad by-product of a modern society that believes every thing we set out to accomplish is important and urgent (referencing Stephen Covey’s works) – the notion that our sense of discernment is unable to distinguish between activity and productivity and the impact, usefulness or usefulness of either of them.

Many things we set out to do are important and some are urgent.  Our sense of discernment regarding how our to-do list is categorized is often flawed, however, and so it becomes easy to become self-critical when the result is evaluated or a result is unknown.

As this story came to mind today, I thought, “I wonder how many times we change someone’s Life and are not aware of it, thus creating a greater, more impactful result than anything we could have planned.”

Productivity and results matter in my world and likely matter in yours.

But in your day-to-day execution, especially at times when you wonder if you are getting done “what you are supposed to get done”, be gentle with yourself and ask what other things you may have accomplished – ask yourself, “Were the things that I accomplished things that I meant to accomplish or things I was meant to accomplish?”

The subtle difference makes all the difference and an honest answer may surprise you.

Many of us have had events and people come into our lives that were similar to the magical geranium that Mrs. Smith received.

Have you been someone else’s magical geranium?

Are you sure?

How do you know?

What do you need to do about it?

Series Origin

This series, a departure from my usual musings, is inspired as a result of conversations with former senior advisors to multiple Presidents of the United States, senior officers in the US Military and other interesting folks as well as my own professional background as a Wall St. / Fortune 25 strategy and large-scale technology architect.

While this musing is just “fiction” (note the quotes) and a departure from my musings on technology, strategy, politics and society, as a strategy guy, I do everything for a reason and with a measurable outcome in mind. :-)

This “fictional” musing is a continuation of the #1206 series noted here.

The Alberta Budget–Revenue, Spending and …. Productivity?

Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort. - Paul J. Meyer

The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager. - Peter Drucker

The productivity of a work group seems to depend on how the group members see their own goals in relation to the goals of the organization. - Ken Blanchard

As the noise dies down from the Alberta budget, the experts have weighed in for and against and the coffee shops have been filled with opinions (with various degrees of intelligence behind them), there is something missing from the dialog that I think someone needs to have the courage to lay out in the open, expose to the light of analysis and address.

Some say the thing that is missing in the conversation is a lack of diversification of Alberta’s revenue streams and there is some merit to this.  Alberta’s revenue engine could stand for some improvement / diversification / isolation from the boom-and-bust budget cycles that are common with primary dependence on oil as a source of revenue.

Some say spending is out of control and needs to be reigned in or slashed mercilessly but running a government has never been known to be a cheap venture and random or across-the-board budget slashing has rarely been known to produce a positive result of any long-term value.

Meanwhile, public sector unions (whose members, by the way, account for 50% of Alberta’s government spending) say the real issue is not money but the fact that they are overworked and need more people to make government more efficient.

Yeah – right.

Blind hiring has never been known to fix anything in the public or private sector.

There is, however, a four-letter word that people either ignore or in the case of this budget, give lip service to but do little to address.

That four-letter word is productivity.

The mere mention of assessing productivity in the public sector draws a cacophony of protests from the public sector as they attempt to drown out the people who correctly point out that cost is not the issue – the real issue is the nature of the ROI (return on investment) on the money that is spent.

And as a long time observer of human productivity (I cofounded and IPOd a company that specialized in the capture, expression and prediction of human productivity mathematically), I have always been fascinated by the hot potato that is public sector productivity.

Now to be fair, there are a lot of public sector employees who provide exemplary performance and results.  It is that group of people who keep governments moving and who provide the services that citizens require.

However, this high level of dedication, performance and results are not the norm and as someone who has consulted at municipal, provincial / state and federal levels (in multiple countries), I wonder when Alberta’s government will have the gumption to tackle issues around enhancing the ROI of the public sector.

Here are a few examples from my own personal experience (the entire list is too long to include here):

• Senior municipal IT workers who freely admit that they switched from the private sector to the public sector because the pressure to deliver is less, they can work less and they get a better pension.  They are building a complex infrastructure for which no customer has been identified as being interested in it but it looks good on their resume.
• The lady with the Absorbine Jr. addiction (she drinks it) who walks around zonked out of her mind all day but cannot be touched for a variety of politically-loaded (read: union) reasons.
• The lady who had spiders in her office and when facilities management showed up to remove them, blocked their entry to protect the spiders.  The standoff lasted a week, tying up a lot of resources almost full time, until the manager forced her to relent (much to the protest of the spiders, I’m sure).
• The lady in a hospital blood testing center who played solitaire on her computer while two people waited for a blood test.  The phlebotomists wandered around inside waiting for someone to be admitted while she played for a high score.  After an hour, she called a colleague and indicated that she needed to be relieved because she was run off her feet.  The people waiting in the room looked at each other, shrugged and shook their heads.
• An emergency room that shut down for hours and took no patients while staff waited for lab work to come back for a specific patient.  Timbits and the like were brought in as nurses and doctors laughed and cajoled in the back.  When I asked the receptionist if it was normal to take no one from the waiting room while waiting for lab work to return for a particular patient and when I noted that it was insulting for a room packed full of tired, sick people to listen to a party going on behind the door, I was informed that if I asked again, I would be escorted out of the emergency room by security.  The lab work took approximately 6 hours to complete.

While these are extreme examples (and I state again that there are many dedicated, professional, hard-working public sector employees), we have some room for improvement.

Whether we have a little room or a lot of room is matter of perspective, insight and analysis.

When it comes to such analysis, the perfunctory self-analysis often conducted by many groups is of little value as is many of their recommendations.  It is ironic that oftentimes, such analysis either produces extra processes and procedures that hinder people and diminish their productivity even more or it results in a recommendation that more people need to be hired “just because”.

Unfortunately, self analysis has rarely been shown to be effective in any public or private sector scenario.

And in fairness, there is a lot of abuse within the system, both by people who work in it and by the citizens that they serve, and this adversely impacts the productivity of the public sector workers (the good ones and the bad ones).

Are we getting ideal ROI from our public sector employees?

How will we know unless we have the courage to ask?

The Bottom Line

Voters get caught up in the game of analyzing the budget from a spending versus revenue perspective and politicians and unions can skilfully and artfully dodge the equally important (and expensive) issue – the issue of lost or diminished productivity.

The dilemma is that to ignore it is expensive from a financial perspective but to tackle it is expensive from a political / PR perspective.

But if we don’t have the courage to tackle the productivity side of government spending / investment, the fiscal scenario of government will continue to get worse with every budget since spending is guaranteed to increase over the years while revenue will constantly be an unpredictable beast of boom or bust.

Unfortunately, we have a situation where our leaders don’t have the courage to tackle the issue, they don’t have the interest to do so or it serves their one personal interests and purpose not to. 

If it was their money, the sense of urgency would be greater, I’m sure.

In addition, by not addressing productivity issues, we are also ignoring those public sector employees who give their all every day to provide the services that citizens need.

Citizens and private sector businesses cannot survive with infinite borrowing while productivity lags, either marginally or precipitously.

Neither can governments.

Does it matter to you?

Are you sure?

Because if people don’t demand these conversations from politicians, then maybe the people don’t care enough either and would rather merely vent in coffee shops.

If that’s the case, the people get the government they deserve and are as much responsible for difficult times as the people in power that they criticize.

And then the demand for better is merely a wish:

Wishes: If wishes were horses then dreamers would ride. But they're much more like cattle, so best grab a shovel.

What do you think of that?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

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Related Posts

• The Alberta Economic Summit and Tough Decisions
• Alberta Bureaucracy - Spending Versus Productivity

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Addendum – Addressing Some Comments – March 29, 2015

I have received a lot of email from public sector employees who asked me to address specific issues.  Rather than answer them individually, I will respond to all of them in this addendum.

1. Why don’t you address issues in the private sector?

This post was intended to identify concerns in the public sector – concerns that are front and center given the discussions around the Alberta budget.  For those who claimed that this post praised the private sector as being perfect, if they read the post carefully, they will see that it does nothing of the sort.  I have noted concerns in the private sector in other blog posts.  The private sector gets many things wrong as well.  However, in the private sector, when an organization executes its productivity poorly, its reward is diminished profits, diminished market share, a diminished stock price and if it continues for too long, the company ceases to exist.  The public sector has no such worries or concerns – it has a safety net that the private sector does not have (with some exceptions).  The private sector is thus, for the most part and with some exceptions, self-correcting – the public sector is not and has no motivation to be so.  What is important to note is that just in the private sector, it is important to find what works well and find ways to emulate that in areas that need improvement.

2. Don’t forget the management of the public sector workers

A solution for assessing productivity strengths and weaknesses includes all levels, from the lowest level right up to politicians and bureaucrats (and even how citizens consume services).  Everyone contributes to strong or poor productivity and thus no one is exempt from analysis of productivity.

3. You can’t measure ROI for government entities because they don’t earn money

The return on investment is not only measured in dollars returned as is commonly expressed in the formula ROI = (gain – cost) / cost.  While this is a simplified measure for investment or capital spending, a return on investment can also be expressed in other forms, such as quality of service provided, the number of services provided versus what can / should be provided, the number of people providing a service versus how many are needed, the time required to initiate a service request response, the turn-around time required in providing services, etc.  There are a number of ways to measure and express this mathematically (non subjectively).

4. Assessing productivity is not as easy to do as you claim it to be

I never said assessing productivity is easy.  I said it was important.  There is a big difference.

5. Why don’t you offer solutions in your post – that would be more useful?

I don’t offer solutions here for three reasons.

1. The solution for each area may have unique aspects to it.  There is no “one size fits all” solution that can be blindly applied to everyone in ignorance of data / analysis that must be derived first.
2. Any solutions that could be provided would likely be lengthy and too academic for a simple post.
3. The analysis and solution would likely be complex and require considerable time and resources.  Do you work for free?

I appreciate people who send me comments in a constructive or interactive tone. Rants or insults from people that such a blog is meant to disparage public sector employees come from people who resist change and thus resist the opportunity for positive growth.

The former serve the people of Alberta well.

The latter exist to delay change or to serve their own purposes – whatever they are.

Alberta Bureaucracy - Spending Versus Productivity

Danielle Smith, Leader of the Official Opposition for the Alberta Legislature, has been consumed lately by some recently discovered executive expenditures and has spent a LOT of time drawing attention to them.

If I could put my Newfoundland accent on (long lost on the streets of New York), I’d say to her – “Give it up, gurl.  Sure, yur lookin’ in da wrong direction, by”.

In fact, if you end up spending a dollar or more looking for every dollar you can claw back, are you really winning?

There’s a much larger pot of gold to be discovered within the Alberta bureaucracy and any bureaucracy for that matter but it takes audacity and courage to root it out.

That pot of gold is in the areas of human productivity and effective resource utilization.

Many studies have been conducted to analyze productivity in public and private sectors around the world and can often be boiled down to the following scenarios.

Scenario 1 – Self Assessed

Very few people will ever assess themselves as underutilized or even utilized at optimal levels (for fear of being removed or having their friends removed) so we can discount all of these assessments. Period.

Scenario 2 – External Assessment

These break down into two sub groups.

2a. Friendly Assessment

Some assessments are at the request of a “friend on the inside”.  They are set up to produce a desirable result much in alignment with scenario 1 but under the guise of an objective, external assessment.  These results can be discarded.

There are other assessments that didn’t start out as “friendly” in the same fashion but the people conducting the assessment discovered that they get paid faster or their journey is less confrontational when their approach is considered friendly to those being assessed.  Please see scenario 1.

2b. Objective Assessment

There are a few objective assessments where the people conducting the assessment call it the way they saw it.  Few of these studies get acted upon or are acted upon in a diluted fashion so as to not offend anyone (especially unions) but which can be referenced as a “strong effort to make things better”.

It also happens that the few assessments that produce positive, measurable results (but which are in the minority) are highlighted and presented as the majority of the results when in fact they represent a small portion of the true effort.

Now … before I continue, I must make two observations:

1. Many large-scale private sector organizations have tremendous issues in the areas of productivity and utilization also.

2. There are many public sector workers who are committed to their job, are proud of their service to their municipality, state, province or nation and are doing an amazing job.  In fact, if it weren’t for them, we’d be toast.

However, having been in a number of public sector areas over the years, as a consultant to different groups, as a consumer of their services and as a long time provider of productivity assessment / enhancement services, I can state without fear of condemnation that the public sector has a long way to go when it comes to discovering where the money is really being lost.

A small example

While one data point doesn’t make a study, I remember a couple of years ago having the need to be in a blood testing center twice in the same week in a hospital.

The first time I was there, I was one of two people there for the hour I waited.

The second time I was there, I was the only person there for the hour I waited.

At one point during the second visit, the receptionist, who had an amazing high score going with her computer-based solitaire card game, picked up the phone and called a colleague to complain about how she was run off her feet with her busy day.  She spent about half an hour on the phone complaining about it.

I was amused by the event until a few days later when the hospital produced a self-assessment of the work load of that particular area, citing how the workers there could not be expected to cope with such pressing workloads for much longer.

I contacted someone in the hospital who had worked in the noted area and she indicated that the workload I observed was typical for any given week.

I guess the hospital (or the union) had embraced Assessment Scenario 1 in order to get a few more people in there.

Cash Outlay Is Not the Only Source of Expense

So when I think of Danielle Smith making a fuss about a $7,000 expense here or a $10,000 expense there, my thought is “chump change”.

Not only should she (and others) care about what is being spent but we should spend more time examining how we spend it.

After all, what we get for what we spend is often equally if not more important than the actual amount spent.

I wonder if too many people think that ROI, KPI and other forms of measurement are actually four-letter words.

The challenge I lay before any politician is this

Do you, Mr. or Ms. Politician, have the courage and the audacity to get to the real core of not only how much is spent but how we spend it, because I can assure you that there is a REAL pot of gold out there waiting to be discovered?

Be forewarned that such a pot of gold is only available to those who have the guts to go after it – those who are not afraid to acknowledge the productivity/utilization-centric economic elephant in the room.

Those who have the courage to set out on that journey of discovery are the real heroes amongst the political corps.

But if you as a politician are afraid to go after that pot of gold and prefer instead to hide behind the safety of criticizing an executive’s expense here or there (or you do nothing at all), then I realize that you’re not really serious about making a difference.

You just want us to believe you are.

The question for the rest of us then becomes ….

Have we been fooled or do we dare to demand better?

What do you think?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Two Job Promotion Trends That Worry Me

As an objective observer and strategy advisor to many organizations ranging from start-ups to Fortune 25 companies, there is a growing job promotion trend in the middle to senior management levels that worries me.

It is has been said that “the meek shall inherit the earth”.

I would like to think that those who inherit the earth are those who make the best contribution to it, whether professionally, personally, spiritually, intellectually and the like.

In essence, those who make the world a better place!

However, I wonder if we are heading towards a trend where the people who will inherit the earth either:

- are promoted because they speak the loudest or have been somewhere the longest, seizing more and more power without having the skills or interest to wield that power appropriately

- hire / promote people who will not threaten them or push them to grow, intentionally preventing growth  in their underlings (the principle of negative selection).

These people may not be the smartest at what they do (which is ok to a certain extent).  Unfortunately, many don’t even care about learning or sharing knowledge with others.

They may not be the most collaborative.  Many prefer to do whatever it takes to win the dog-eat-dog world that they perceive.

They may not be the servant leaders that we need more of in the world.  They may see servant leadership as a sign of weakness.

They may not be the most confident in their abilities or in recognizing the abilities of others.  In fact, lifting themselves up by undercutting others may be their preferred way of advancement.

They are, however, very proficient in how they manage their career growth via the use of political or other negative means.  They are so good at it that many who would ordinarily strive to make strong contributions are often discouraged from active participation for fear of being criticized for thinking that they are better than everyone else or with the rationalization of “why should I bother when no one around me cares”.

Many good people leave altogether.

And many otherwise great contributors who stick around eventually become victims of Lawnmower Syndrome and stop contributing altogether.

When good people leave or stop contributing, it is at that point that the ignorant and incompetent relax, feeling secure in their place of perceived power.

Unfortunately, their organization is losing as a result and the feeling of security that the incompetent experience is short-lived as diminished results on their part produce diminished results for the organization overall. Eventually, many such organizations stumble or fall as a result and the sense of security evaporates as many people, good and bad, have to seek employment elsewhere.

This is not just an illustration of the Peter Principle, where people ultimately rise to their level of incompetence.  Many of the people  I am referring to have long blown the lid of that principle in how they have advanced in their careers.

I’m not suggesting that the existence of such people have reached the tipping point where they are the dominant type of management.  I have reviewed a few surveys that say they have and they haven’t so the jury is out when it comes to making such a generalization.

However, many of my colleagues and I notice that they are becoming much more common and influential.

Too much so.

Maybe these people are just becoming more confident as they rise through the ranks of society.

Maybe they feel safer in revealing their true selves in an HR world where we misinterpret the Desiderate mantra “Even the dull and ignorant, they too have their story”, thereby opening ourselves to abuse because we are tolerant of things that we shouldn’t be tolerant of.

Either way, the outcomes of the groups they manage and the organizations they contribute to are suffering as a result.

We achieve what we focus on

It is generally accepted that the values, ethics and behaviours that are tolerated or embraced within an organization are the ones that will grow within that organization, good or bad.

I was reminded of this yesterday in a conversation with a colleague when I was recounting the time I had a grievance filed against me for being too respectful.

The point of the grievance was that anyone as respectful to others as I am must be up to something and therefore I should stop immediately.

It’s a sad reflection on an organization’s leadership when a leader’s insecurity is so strong that a positive human trait represents a threat to them.

It also sends a strong statement to that person’s team that positive traits are to be suppressed or discouraged, not being welcome in someone’s world of insecurity.

As a result, the group in question suffered significantly in results and personal and professional growth.

But at least the leader didn’t have to worry about anyone below them “threatening them” with more knowledge and a healthier outlook.

The Underlying Cause

After studying leaders for many years, I think that the trend of poor or incompetent promotion behaviour is growing because of another disturbing trend.

There is a major disconnect between these people and the organizations they work for.  This disconnect is in regards to how results are measured and understanding how one person’s results impact the layers above and below them.

I believe many people have lost sight of how their efforts, contributions and results contribute to the big picture – either having not been told or because they don’t care to ask.

And when that happens, they don’t really care about who does what when and how they do it because they can’t tell (or don’t care) what the ultimate impact will be anyway.

They confuse activity with productivity.

And that’s not their fault.

It is the fault of their leaders.

Are you a strong leader who helps your people understand their measurable contribution and the impact on your team, business unit, division or company?

Can you measure it?

If you can’t or don’t measure it, then you don’t know.

Period.

The vision, mission, purpose and projected outcomes of an organization demand that we make a proactive effort to put the best people in place within the constraints that we have and that we do so to intentionally produce appropriate measurable results.

Are you making such a proactive effort?

How do you know?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Silence is Golden

I’m on vacation.

It’s nothing elaborate.

I haven’t gone off to some ritzy vacation resort where all the family members are overwhelmed with stuff to do.

I haven’t gone to a remote place that requires a PhD to plan how to get a family there and back again without losing someone along the way.

The thought of such a vacation exhausts me just thinking about it.  I thought vacations were created to help us rest, not run us down further.

What I have done is unplugged from my day-to-day regimen and taken some time to recharge in the middle of a cross-country move.

No client emails or voicemails …. no meetings.

Almost (yes, almost) no social media interaction.  Yep .. almost no Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any of the other services I am a member of.  Surprisingly and contrary to popular opinion, you can cut back significantly and still do quite well mentally.

Very few people know where we are.

It’s just me, my family (all but my oldest son), some good books that I’ve been meaning to finish for a year or more and practically no agenda.

Yes … I do have a cross-country move to finish and I will return to it.

However, right now as ocean breezes blow in through the window of the place we are in and the moon casts its glow across the gentle ocean ripples, I am reminded of something we all lose sight of on occasion.

Silence is golden … truly golden.

The silence was deafening at first.  My greatest worry was “How would I survive without all the activity in my life, most of which was taking place in my mind?”

However, as the calmness pervaded my sense of being, I realized that much of the activity in my life is not actually bringing the value that I would expect it to bring to myself, my family, my clients or anyone else.

It is just noise.

Vilfredo Pareto had it right with his Pareto Principle – 80% of the activity in my life is contributing to 20% of the value.  Conversely, the remaining 20% of the activity is producing 80% of the value.

How did I allow the 80% of activity to become what it is?

Well, I believe that we get so overwhelmed with information overload that we don’t even notice after a while.  It’s the boiling frog analogy all over again – the frog sitting in the pot of cold water on the stove doesn’t notice the gradual increase in the water temperature until it boils to death.

Whether apocryphal or not, the analogy is perfect.

Until we actually take time to silence all the activity around us, especially inside our mind, then we lose sight of the ability to truly understand the difference between activity and productivity; between action and traction.

It is easy for each of us to proclaim how productive we are all the time.  However, as with many afflictions, personal productivity is practically impossible to self-assess.  Only by asking others (e.g. family, friends, clients) or by using specific, measurable criteria can we determine how well we are doing in life.

Until we do that, we may be surprised to know the truth.

We may be angry at the feedback we receive.

We may be embarrassed or disappointed.

In addition, we may be afraid to slow down because we all want to believe the world will shrivel up and die without us.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Only our ego could dream up such a thing.

So given that the world will merrily continue to function quite well without us, what would it hurt us to occasionally put our hand up and say “Stop – I need a minute to think”.

I just did …. and I must tell you that the result was delicious, invigorating and revitalizing.  It is providing me with greater insight and clarity into upcoming projects.

We are happy to spend thousands on the latest gimmick du jour to help us improve our productivity.

Sometimes the greatest thing we can do is nothing at all … just for a little while.

Are you ready to give it a try?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Silence is Golden”, please click here.

Bringing Focus Back to Purpose

I was sifting through my inbox last night and this morning and thought "How many of these things that I do are bringing me closer to my Life goals?"  As we all know, every choice in life brings us closer to or further away from our goals.  The decision to not make a choice between various options is in itself a choice and unless you are incredibly lucky, not a choice that consistently carries you closer to your ultimate purpose.

We move closer to our Life goals and Life purpose when we can visualize what we "want to be when we grow up" and take specific actions towards that vision.  Many of you who know me personally have seen the vision board I carry in my pocket, a constant reminder of my ultimate destination while I am here on Earth and my ultimate destination when my end-of-days has arrived.

However, as I sorted through the list of "asks" on my desk, all of which are quite noble and important to the requestor, I realized that most of them are not in congruence with my purpose.

When I accept too many of these, whether personal or professional requests, my efforts become diluted.  Since many are not in alignment with my passion, as a human being it is possible I won't put my best efforts into them or I may procrastinate heavily regarding them.  This is because they are not something I feel strongly about or my brain might just be overloaded with too many of them.

Many of these requests will have no impact on my life at all and in fact, will have little impact on the life of the requestor either.  Many times, people will lob stuff in your direction because they want you to solve it - the belief that "their want" should become "your desire".  However, when you push back on them to do it themselves, you find they don't want to do it either or it is not important enough for them to get at it right away.  How important was it at all if that is the case?

I was recently asked to help a client whose company was dying and discovered that my passion for success far outstripped their own.  They were in fact, indifferent to the success of their organization, which is why they asked me to save it.  When I came to that realization, I turned them down, pointing out that if they didn't care, why should I?  They didn't understand the question, saying I should want to help them because we were friends.  Imagine where our lives would be if we catered to that line every time!

While it feels noble to want to help everyone who comes to you looking for help, eventually by helping everyone except yourself, you burn out, awash in exhaustion, frustration and maybe even financial trouble while the people who loaded you up in the first place have moved on to find others to help them.

I'm not suggesting that you help no one or that you be cold and ruthless about who you help.  I'm suggesting that you be more discerning and discriminating in how much time you have for your own personal objectives and how much you have to give to others.  Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has some powerful tools to help you in this area.

You are most empowered to help people in the best way possible when you are strong mentally, spiritually, physically and emotionally.  To get into and stay in that state takes a commitment to yourself as well as to others.

Sometimes saying no to someone is the best thing that could happen to them as it will either force them to find someone else who could put more passion in it than you (potentially producing a better result) or it forces them to justify their ask, possibly causing them to realize it wasn't that important in the first place.  Maybe after they have justified their ask, you may see an opportunity to align your purpose with their ask.  Everyone wins if that is the case.

If you give all of your time away, pretty soon you will be so spent that you will not offer any value to yourself or others.

Don't let this happen to you.  Keep your purpose squarely in front of you at all times.  Know when you have time to help great causes and great people and know when it is time to focus on your own purpose.

When the time for laser-life focus is upon you, don't be afraid to say no.  It may be the most empowering choice you made that day - for everybody!

As Paul wrote in Galatians 6:9-10 (my emphasis added)

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.  Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people...

So, give when you can.  I teach everyone to give before getting.  However, sometimes you can't give at the moment and that is ok.  Don't let people convince you to feel guilty for such guilt may propel you to serve others incessantly until you fail completely.

Live your life - not theirs.  When you live your life, you can help others be successful (however you gauge success).  The reverse is not necessarily true or as fulfilling.

Now if you will excuse me, I've got to tell a bunch of people that I'm too busy right now.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

Musings on resources versus resourcefulness

Good day, everyone.

I had an interesting interaction today with an associate and it brought some interesting thoughts to mind that I wanted to share and to invite some dialog on.

In the goal setting / life architecture program that I incubated for inner city youth, one of the things the kids and I discuss is the notion of overcoming the limited belief that people cannot accomplish things because they have limited access to time, energy and money. This fear prevents many people from striving to reach their dreams, because they believe they don’t have enough of “what it takes” in order to begin on their path and to reach their goals. For that reason, many people wait until the right moment to execute, only to discover years later that they waited too long because the perfect alignment of all resources never seemed to arrive.

In helping a good friend of mine (a fellow ‘Softee) sort through some messy client stuff today, someone else stepped up and said “One of the reasons this failed is that we don’t have enough time or people to do it right” to which I replied “Lack of success doesn’t stem from lack of resources – it stems from lack of resourcefulness”. I seem to recall that Norman Vincent Peale or someone similar coined this phrase many years ago.

However, it got me to thinking. With the pressures on our personal and professional lives, it is sometimes easy to fall back on an inability to execute because we believe we have limited time, energy and money and because of this belief, our intention to execute is stifled by fear that we are not equipped to seek out our ultimate goals or to execute things successfully. However, if we start to believe this on a consistent basis, perhaps we open ourselves up to not only lack of progress toward life goals, but perhaps to the potential for failure, with the thought that we can leverage the excuse of lack of this, that or the other thing to back us up when we fail.

When one considers unlimited time, energy and money to accomplish that which we wish to accomplish, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we have it within our personal portfolio. It is through recognizing that out network contributes to our success just as we contribute to the success of our network that we have access to unlimited resources. So when we need time, energy or money to execute successfully, we need to be open to leveraging the help of those whom we collaborate with just as we can be counted on when someone needs our help.

Only by doing this can we reach new heights of success and to help others reach their own new heights of success. People need to recognize more often that they can’t do it all themselves and no one expects them to. Leveraging the talents of the wonderful people all around us will take us to new heights and create opportunities that we never envisioned that we would have the opportunity to partake in.

I am very much interested in how readers of this blog help others leverage appropriate skills to make them more successful personally and professionally and how you helped someone overcome barriers (or how someone helped you overcome barriers) towards success.

Comments are welcome and invited.

I wish you all a wonderful day. Create opportunities for success where you can.

Best wishes,

Harry