Some quotations seem to show up in my life over and over.

This quote is one that shows up often, and it I thought it made sense to share here:

"Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."

-- Albert Einstein, scientist

I am a big quotation collector and have provided my Powerquotes service for many years.

This quotation though is the focus of my coaching-by-email service Powerquotes Plus this week.

I encourage you to think about Einstein's rules of work this week. And see how these rules can make your week more successful.

Also posted in Creativity and Leadership.

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Several months ago, I wrote a piece about potential, and we converted it into a Flash movie. Someone emailed me the other day to thank me for it, and I re-watched it.

I remember how proud I am of it.

I'd be honored if you watched it. You can find it here. If you enjoyed it, please forward it to others.

It goes like this...

Potential…

We are all born with it.

We come into the world totally beautiful and complete, inside and out.

Babies may not be beautiful by the standards by which we judge adults,

but everyone agrees, babies are beautiful.

The beauty comes from our potential glowing and shining through.

Bundles of joy, indeed.

Bundles of potential, for sure.

We never know when we look at a baby, how their potential will manifest.

Doctor?

Inventor?

Mother Theresa?

Read the rest here.

Also posted in Leadership.

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I ran across this online stress test and I encourage you to check it out.

It may not be clinically perfect, but it doesn't matter.

It raises an important question for us. How does my stress level impact my ability to lead, be a part of a team, effectively train others or perform at the highest levels of Customer Service?

We know the answer.

Whatever your stress score, take time today to think about how stress impacts your effectiveness. If this reflection causes you any concern, decide what you can do to take action to either reduce your stress, or take actions that reduces the impact of the stress on your performance.

Also posted in Customer Service, Leadership, Teamwork, and Training

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I love my work.

I got an email a couple of days ago from Kris Bordessa who after reading this blog, pointed me to hers.

Yet another great reason to blog - meeting cool people and learning cool things!

Her blog, called, "Great Solutions to Team Challenges" is new, but it is going to be a great place to subscribe to. Her interest is in "fun activities for families" and is the author of an upcoming book, Team Challenges: 170+ Group Activities to Build Cooperation, Communication and Creativity (Zephyr Press, November 2005).

Her site is going to be valuable for trainers and those interested in teambuilding. Even if the exercises are designed for younger adults, I am confident there will be ideas you can adapt and mold to your needs.

Additionally, her latest post points to a page that lists 50 Phrases That Kill Creativity. A great list of what I call Cold Water Comments - phrases or thoughts that throw cold water on new ideas.

Take a look at her site and this list - you will be glad you did.

Also posted in Training, Creativity, and Teamwork.

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I am a positive person. I always have been. I have always seen it as the most logical approach to life.

Much of what I have learned as an adult and as a trainer, consultant and speaker reconfirms my belief that a positive approach will bring you better results than a negative or cynical one will.

Now, I learn it may even help us live longer.

Cool.

Kevin Kelly wrote in his blog recently about a study that found a positive outlook can help people live longer.

What are the implications of this for us? Here are a couple I think of immediately.

- Positive messages, affirmations, humor, etc. could be as valuable to our health regimen as fewer carbs.
- As leaders we can do the right thing for our results by keeping a more positive environment. Beyond that, it may help people live longer.

Look at your normal day and see if you can find three ways that you can be more positive - it could extend your life!

Also posted in Leadership and Training

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This morning's New York Times has an article (you will have to register for free to read it) about the winter Toy Show and how that industry is changing, with WalMart and Target playing a bigger and bigger role. This wasn't really news to me.

What I found more interesting was the following:

"Adding to the industry's problems, children are losing interest in toys earlier, their attention seized by video games, cable TV and the Internet, in a phenomenon known to the trade as "kagoy," which stands for "kids are getting older, younger." What only a few years ago nicely held an 8-year-old's attention - action figures, for example - now is considered marketable only to 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds, said Neil Friedman, the president of Fisher-Price Brands..."

Kagoy - Kids are getting older, younger.

I find this interesting for at least two reasons:

1. Words help us understand things better. I know that kagoy isn't technically a word but more like an acronym. The technicality doesn't matter. The point is that as we expand our vocabulary we are able to think and express ourselves more clearly. I am sure I will observe several things over the course of the next week that I will be able to connect with "kagoy".

2. While this trend of kids are getting older, younger, may be true; I find it sad. Kids are playing sports more competitively younger. Kids have more entertainment options sooner. Something is leading to younger girls looking older all the time (A fact that is very clear when I go to my son's middle school and reflect on what I remember girls looking like in 7th and 8th grades). It makes me wonder how we can let our kids, be kids.

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There are certain things in life that we all know we need to do, but don't always do:

- floss
- exercise regularly
- drink 8 glasses of water a day
- eat breakfast

oh, and back up your data.

Take it from me - I didn't lose much data, just a little sleep, and a lot of productivity over the last 8 days.

I'm almost completely digitally back, and it feels good.

p.s. If you haven't backed up today, do yourself a favor, and just do it.

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Last Saturday I saw a brief story on the news about the short lived, but very large art exhibit in New York's Central Park, The Gates. After watching it, my Dad and commented, "I wonder who is paying for that?".

The next day, catching part of a 60 Minutes interview I learned that the artist, Christo, was funding this all himself - to the tune of $20 million.

As the week has gone on I have learned more bits and pieces about this exhibit, and I grow more awed and inspired each day.

Christo started trying to sell this vision in 1979, but it wasn't until Michael Bloomberg became mayor that he made the sale.

When was the last time you spent 24 years trying to sell a project, a year and a half to put it together - all to last just 16 days.

Wow.

The next time I want a model for passion in projects, I'll think of Christo.

To learn more about this project, go to http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/tg.html

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I first read about it on January 20th. Eight Indianapolis White Castle restaurants were going to offer special service on Valentine's Day.

A restaurant taking reservations, offering service at the table, and using real table clothes and silverware isn't much of a story on Valentine's Day. Except at White Castles, which are 24 hour hamburger joints on the lower end of the food chain (if you pardon my pun) - all apologies to White Castle loyalists.

They made news on January 20th, and have tons of local press coverage today - and all the reservations are taken. Additional restaurants in the chain have vowed to join this service next year.

White Castle used creativity to build a promotion, get loads of free publicity, and tap into their very loyal fans too.

The passion shows. Congrats to White Castle on a creative promotion and a wonderful Customer Service idea.

Also posed in Creativity and Customer Service.

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Valentine's Day is for romance and love, so you may be wondering why I would write about it in this blog. Valentine's Day is about more than romance and love... it is about passion. And passion is something we definitely can talk about here.

As you celebrate Valentine's Day today, let your passion for life, for projects, and for ideas to show through.

Your passion will create energy.

Your passion will help you influence others.

Your passion will change, in a positive way, how others see you and your abilities.

Your passion can make a difference.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Also posted in Leadership, Customer Service, Teamwork, and Training.

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If you haven't been to ChangeThis.com yet, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Based on an idea from Seth Godin, this site is designed to help spread great ideas. The process looks like this:

1. Provide a forum and a format (the website)
2. Allow people to offer up their ideas as proposals.
3. Let people vote on the proposals they are interested.
4. Create the "manifestos" of the most popular proposals.
5. Make it easy for people to read, print and email these manifestos wherever they want.

After reading on the site for several weeks, I made a proposal, True Team Building - More Than a Recreational Retreat which was accepted on the 8th!

Check out my proposal and vote for it, if you think it merits the vote. Then check out the rest of the site.

p.s. If you are like me, you will want some time once you start roaming the site - some great ideas to read and ponder.

(Thanks for your vote!)

Also posted in Teamwork, Creativity, Training, and Leadership.

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Turn on the radio or any of the TV news channels and you will soon hear about the Social Security issue. Should we do anything? Should we privatize part of it? Trust me, we will hear more of this before it is over.

It is an interesting debate. But let me make it more personal.

What are you investing in you?

I'm not talking about retirement. I'm talking about investing in your own self development. Look at your annual expenditures and see what you are spending books, subscriptions, workshops, training, coaching and more. Are you investing as much as you could or should?

Many people recommend a 3% benchmark. 3% of your income, spent not on food, housing, clothing, tithing, or entertainment. But on you.

How close are you coming?

Click HERE to read a great post on this topic on Curt Rosengren's The Occupational Adventure blog.

Also posted in Leadership and Training.

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Our minds look for patterns and if things stay consistent with the pattern,they don't notice too much. This fact keeps us from being in constant over-stimulation and allows us to function.

This is a fact that we often forget as teachers and learners (which we all are, right?) Learning is stronger and longer lasting when we discover something new. This fact matters to us as trainers, leaders, coaches and mentors. Let people discover, rather than giving them all the answers first.

To learn how to ride a bike, we have to discover falling.

Give people a chance today to discover - rather than giving everything to them on a silver platter (or in a PowerPoint presentation).

I've called this discovery learning for years. A recent post in the Creating Passionate Users blog calls it the WTF Principle - or Surprise learning.

Read that post and think today about how you can surprise those you help learn.

You'll be surprised how successful surprise can be.

Also posted in Leadership and Training.

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A good friend and colleague of mine, Chris Saeger, referred a Peter Block article to me recently. The article is entitled, You the Audience.

The premise of the article is that our expectations as audiences for conferences, sessions, and speeches are skewed towards entertainment and away from learning. We want the handouts, and if we can't attend a session we hope we can get an audio recording of it. Heaven forbid we have to be active in the process! Block argues . . .

"We should stop mistaking listening for learning. Learning demands something of us. We cannot receive value for something we have not invested in. Sitting quietly is not an investment. Sitting passively in a large, dark room simply reinforces our willingness to be a spectator to life. To let life happen to us..."

I agree - listening isn't learning!

If you want to learn we must challenge ourselves to be more active in our knowledge acquisition, even if the presenter isn't providing those opportunities for us. We can ask ourselves how we will apply it, how this relates to our work, and look for connections and new ideas from what is being said to applications in our lives.

and...

When we are in front of the audience, the message is clear - we need to engage people. Engagement is more than interaction, more than activity. Learning takes place when we are emotionally connected to and/or transformed by the experience.

Think about how you can engage your learners. Design activities and space for people to really learn.

p.s. if you find yourself mentally cheering, or even nodding your head to this post, then read Block's piece and become a member of the North American Simulation and Gaming Association. Both are free!


Also posted in Training.

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800-CEO-READ's Blog posted the list of books that the Harvard Business Review thinks we should watch for in 2005.

At least one of them is already on my Amazon Wishlist.

Read their post HERE

Also posted in Leadership and Training.

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Since I talked about tradition yesterday, I have another thought about it today.

I watched the President's State of the Union Address last night (no this isn't a political commentary you can find plenty of those elsewhere). At the end, one of the first things Brian Williams of NBC said was, "The speech went 54 minutes and was interrupted by applause 66 times."

66 times!

Now, I know this clapping is tradition, and there were clearly sometimes I understood why half or all of the chamber chose to applaud. But 66 times?

According to my research the four major networks had 15 share for the speech. Add the cable outlets to this and you have upwards of 20% of the televisions watching the President. (Granted my numbers may get off as I go through this analysis - I couldn't find the numbers on what the ratings points equate to, but bear with my logic...)

This rough research leads me to estimate that 20% of the televisions were tuned to the President - 60 million televisions. If the applause breaks had been cut in half, I estimate the total time of the speech would have been reduced by at least 5 minutes. So, that means 60 million x 5 minutes = 5 million hours of us collectively watching extra applause.

Let's assume my numbers are way off, some people were watching while doing their jobs, or were otherwise engaged, so let's halve it - 2.5 million hours of people watching applause when they might have otherwise been doing something else more productive. How might our country benefit from:

- an extra 2.5 million hours of good parenting?
- an extra 2.5 million hours of volunteer work?
- an extra 2.5 million hours of productive work done (what is the economic impact of that?)
- an extra 2.5 million hours of personal development time (how does that translate into economic development?)

Economists smarter than I could dollarize this time, and I know all of this is hypothetical. Thinking about it though, prompted me to wonder if our elected officials accomplished anything yesterday that could have the impact on the nation than the opportunity cost of 2.5 million hours of American time spent doing something productive. And all they would have had to do was clap less.

Important p.s. I believe more people should watch these events. I am proud to live in a country where we have traditions such as the State of the Union address, required by our Constitution. Please don't take my pondering as a comment about the process or the speech.

My thoughts are meant to spur your thoughts as they did mine, which is one of the reasons I write this blog to start with.

Also posted in Creativity.

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I never gave much thought to Groundhog Day until after I became a fan of the movie, starring Bill Murray. Since then, I always "celebrate" the day, which mostly means I am aware of it. It is a tradition with dubious origins and no real value from my perspective, other than providing an economic bump to a region of Pennsylvania.

There are lots of activities in organizations that are a bit like Groundhog day. We do them like clockwork, we aren't really sure why, and no one ever stops to look at the value these activities add.

Look at the traditions and rituals and established "this is how we do it heres" in your company, in your department and at your desk today. Determine if these things should continue, or be evaluated more closely for improvement or elimination.

It should be noted that many traditions are valuable and should be upheld, revered and strengthened. Perhaps you will find some of these in your search. If so, strengthen them, as they will strengthen your results.

I urge you then to make Groundhog Day matter - whether Phil sees his shadow or not.

p.s. When I was doing my radio show, Magical Movies with Kevin Eikenberry, I did an hour on Groundhog Day. To listen, go to: http://www.kevineikenberry.com/about_kevin/radio.asp and pick Groundhog Day from the drop down list.

Also posted in Leadership, Teamwork and Creativity.

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A curious title for a blog entry, I know. But it is the title of a book I read this weekend.

When people who I trust or respect tell me to read a book I usually at least research the book. When two such people tell me, I really take notice. When they give me specific reasons why they think I should read it (as opposed to giving a genaric recommendation), you can pretty much bet it will end up on my reading list.

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon is one such book. It is a very clever, unique and creative novel. It is also the best insight I have ever gained into autism and how people with autism think and operate.

My neighbors have a son named Chris who is autistic. After reading this book, I not only feel more creative, but I understand Chris better too.

I read this book in a relatively short time, but I believe I will benefit from it for years. This is not something I can usually say about a novel, but is high praise for a book in any genre.

Consider this a recommendation from a friend - read this book.

Also posted in Creativity.

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