I’ve spent the last two days meeting with the global marketing partners for my company. We operate in 17 countries, so this annual meeting is always a jam-packed but productive time where we can share ideas, frustrations and collaborate.
And as you can probably imagine, it’s also filled with plenty of presentations given with sub-par English.
One country’s group included their general manager and two managers from its marketing department. The general manager speaks excellent English, while the other two speak very broken English. I probably speak for the rest of the room when I say we all assumed the GM would be giving the presentation.
But he didn’t.
He let one of his managers do the job. And let me tell you: it was rough. Yeah, we all made it through it, but it was an effort to really understand what the guy was saying, unfortunately.
I found myself frustratingly wondering, “Why doesn’t the GM hop up and take over this presentation?!?” I mean, their presentation was essentially being hijacked by a communication breakdown of epic proportions. I stared at him as he just sat and smiled, trying my best to use the Force to get him to stand up and step in.
But he didn’t. He just kept smiling.
Admit that you’re wrong. Even if you’re not.
If resolving the conflict truly is priority number one, then admit to screwing up, say you’re sorry and move on. This is what everyone else is waiting for someone to do, and yet no one has the balls to actually do it.
Sure, there are times you need to stick to your guns. But probably not as often as you think. Most of the time, just resolving the conflict would make everything better.
You big enough to do it?
One of the best things I’ve done this year is join a men’s bible study group that meets on Friday mornings. Now, bible studies are no stranger to me; if there was ever a church boy, it’s me. But in the past few years, I haven’t had a regular bible study where you really dig into the Word and connect with a group of guys. So that’s what I’m doing now.
This past week, as I was simply talking about God with some guys, I realized that the simple act of talking alone was transformational. Then it got me thinking about how writing, teaching and buying are very similar.
What I mean is that what we do can very much influence, even determine, what we think. And since none of us take to change easily, it’s important to realize we can use certain tools and approaches to make change easier. Here’s what I mean by that:
It’s that time of year again.
I was walking around a park near my house just the other day. I noticed a couple, probably in their 40s, or 50s, walking briskly behind me as I began. They were focused, and clearly getting a head start on their New Year’s Resolutions.
I then heard their footsteps quicken behind me. The husband passed me, then looked back and saying “C’mon, baby.” The wife quickly snipped back with “I can’t.” The husband then doubled back to encourage her, and she managed to run a few more steps, only to further confirm her sentiment with a strong “I can’t do anymore!” The husband backed off.
I know exactly what the husband was thinking at this point. He was thinking, “Oh, you don’t even know how to push yourself.” I could see it in his eyes, his posture, everything. He was a relatively fit guy, and I’d be willing to bet he’s spent plenty of his youth on sports teams, at two-a-day football practices or the like, pushing himself with 50 other guys that we men eventually, somehow, consider the greatest days of our lives.
What I’m saying is he recognized that the whole point of this running thing was to push yourself into p
Processes … we hate them all unless they are our own. Then we treasure it with every ounce of pride we have.
Interesting thing about working in an office: when things go wrong, the first thing we look to is creating or improving our processes. Meantime, no one wants to follow them.
Where I work, we recently updated our job request form. The old form was seriously overwhelming, and nobody wanted to fill it out. It’s so easy to try to ask for everything in a request form to make it easy on you. But what it does is make it difficult on everyone else, which means they won’t use the stupid thing. Which then makes it difficult on you, cuz they end up just emailing you everything. Backfire…
But once you do improve your process, it becomes awkward to ask people to follow it. You don’t want to come across as one of those project management prudes (cheap shot), and you feel like you’re being lazy for not just taking the request and entering it yourself. Offices are filled with hallway requests and offshoot, half-baked emails. Who are you to rock the boat?
Yes, “Wade Phillips” can be a verb.
As in, “John was simply caught in a no-win situation, so I Wade Phillipsed him.”
Or …
“Even though Jane’s whole team is responsible for the project’s failure, I’m gonna have to Wade Phillips her just to make a statement.”
For those who don’t know, Wade Phillips was the coach of the Dallas Cowboys until this past Monday afternoon. And for those who don’t know, the Cowboys have much bigger problems than a bad head coach.
But perception is reality, and the simple fact is the Cowboys are sucking and the natives are restless. A sacrifice had to be offered, and it had to be Wade Phillips’ head on a platter.
You probably have purposes. As in more than one purpose.
I love the idea of “knowing our purpose” in this life, but my hunch is it’s not accurate. While all of us want to have our big moment that people will write books about one day and we’ll hear Whitney Houston singing “One Moment in Time” in the background, I think it actually sells the excitement of life a little short.
Ironically, I think Christians (like me) have taken this idea even further. Yes, I love the idea that God put me on this planet to do something. Wanna know what I like more? The idea that he put me on this planet to do lots of things.
“Smoking killed far more people than terrorists ever did. It’s just not as dramatic.”
You can thank Seth Godin for that loaded byte. His post on the power of slow change makes a great point: single events don’t crush anything; series of events over time do.
On the one hand, you’ve got something to be happy about: no individual act is make or break for you. So stop treating it that way.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower once said “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” You could take that idea several different directions. I’d like to take it one step further: Planning is overrated; response is everything. I actually think this is just another way to say what Ike said. Once you hit the battlefield, whatever your battlefield [...]
It only takes attendance at a few meetings to identify the hat-hangers. You know the ones I’m talking about. The guy who always brings up the point that is only marginally relevant, but is brought up with such gusto and vocabulary as to assure we all know this guy knows something we don’t. Or the [...]
